Integrating Social Media into Conferencing & Events

Last week, I gave an after-lunch talk to marketing and events professionals, hosted by the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre. The feedback was positive so I thought I'd post some of the key insights and tips on a couple of events industry blog sites. The posts have since been tweeted and re-tweeted so many times, I must have struck a positive chord with event planners. So, I've decided to post my talk highlights one more time, here... I hope you find it useful.

My talk went something like this…

I firmly believe that online marketing and communication channels such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and FlickR are enabling event planners, venues and suppliers to develop longer-term interaction with event attendees.

These online tools are allowing us to grow the conference or event beyond the physical and to keep people talking about their experiences and our event content long after the last delegate has left the building.

Social Media is nothing short of a communications revolution. It’s a means to amplify our messaging, build community, gather feedback in real time, ask questions of our audiences, research our markets and gain business referrals from our new online friends and followers.

One-way marketing messages, whereby a newsletter or piece of email marketing is sent out from an email address that says DO NOT REPLY are becoming obsolete. The communications revolution is all about Conversations, User Generated Content and Interacting with the online community.

We can no longer control what is said online by people attending our events so we need to understand how to engage with the conversations that are already happening, build loyalty amongst followers and provide good Social Media Value.

So I’m just going to give you a few tips on how to start thinking about integrating Social Media into your marketing or event strategies.

If you’re not using Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, the best way to understand their benefits is simply to start using them socially. Once you get to grips with the simple mechanics of growing online conversation, such as Hashtags, Fan Pages, Tiny URLs, TwitPics etc, you can then start to see how it can be applied to your every-day business or event planning needs.

When integrating Social Media into Event strategies, consider how it can be used to engage with delegates or attendees at an earlier stage. A lot of exhibitions now use Twitter as a free marketing tool to communicate the latest confirmed speaker, or encourage registration sign-ups. But what about creating user groups on LinkedIn or Facebook and crowd sourcing what topics delegates wish to hear about or allowing them to vote on panelists, or even something as simple as the theme of the gala dinner. By engaging your audience at an earlier stage, you will secure their buy-in and reduce the number of no-shows or drop-outs.

Every event has a website but, by creating multiple event pages across different online streams you’ll be casting your net wider and enhancing your search engine optimization at the same time. This is especially true if you then link your blog, Facebook Fan Page, YouTube Channel and LinkedIn discussion group back to your website.

In the run up to the event, launch Twitter competitions awarding free registration or tickets. A simple way to do this is just to ask people on Twitter to Re-Tweet a chosen message. A winner can be then drawn from the pile of Re-tweets that appear in your @Replies Folder. This is a good way to track the reach of your marketing messages across Twitter and to see who is willing to engage with the event. Maybe you can reward the most loyal advocates in some other way at a later date.

During the event, launch a HashTag on Twitter and encourage people to use it so that attendees and remote watchers can follow what’s happening. Putting a HashTag before a word simply creates a link to a new page. This page then shows the full conversation stream of everyone who has used that chosen HashTag – enabling a simple way to follow a particular conversation subject.

If you then stage an unofficial Tweet up (networking event for people engaged with Twitter), it’s a good way to spread the word of your chosen HashTag and get likely content creators motivated and excited.

Broadcasting the conversations that people are hash-tagging, by running a live stream on a big screen on the main stage at your event, is perhaps a risk too far. Human nature dictates that somebody at some point will publish something offensive. But, why not use smaller screens in seminar rooms to help facilitate real-time Q&A sessions whilst the speaker is presenting?

You’ll find that some audience members will be able to answer the questions before the speaker does. If this is deemed too distracting for the speaker then technology offered by companies such as Crystal Interactive allow audience members to text in questions during the presentation, which are stored and can then be shown on screen and answered during an allotted Q&A slot.

Your aim with Social Media should be, to spread as widely as possible, content generated, either for the event by those directly involved, or by participants, advocates and remote watchers.

There’s so many web-based applications available to allow you to stream video, share speaker presentations, merge all Hash-tagged Tweets into PDF documents, create graphs and charts to measure the Return on the Objective of HashTags, launch user generated photo galleries, broadcast audio and so much more.

If you’re not doing any of these things, just think how much more engaging your events could be – if only you’d invested the time in discovering what free Social Media can do for you.

What's the point of Twitter? Building our brand online

As individuals, many of us embody a brand that we develop online. Maybe yours is an extension of the firm you represent or you have a professional reputation you’re keen to enhance. You may simply strive to be popular within a social group or you'd like to be talked about in positive terms.

What was referred to in the days before social networking sites as status, credibility, reputation or popularity, has now evolved into something millions of us nurture online every day.

This evolutionary development began in August 2003 with the launch of MySpace. In the UK however, the importance of a site where friends could share, message and stay connected took longer to filter into our conscious day-to-day lives.

It wasn’t until September 2006 and the availability of Facebook to anyone with an email address, did we really begin to evolve our online brand image.

Facebook is now the world’s default social network with 17 million unique users in the UK and 250 million unique visitors worldwide.

The speed at which it has developed is best seen when comparing page views with MySpace. In May 2008, the sites were about the same size. Facebook has since more than doubled and currently attracts 84 billion worldwide monthly page views, compared with 57 billion for MySpace.

In the UK, one million of us connect and nurture our professional brand personas via Linkedin, whilst 3.5 million of us share our brand visuals by posting photos on Flickr.

The majority of 18-24 year olds still use MySpace, whilst Facebook is more popular with 25-35 year olds. Unsurprisingly, it’s the 25-54 age bracket that connect via Linkedin.

But now, there’s one more ‘not so new’ social networking tool that has infiltrated our evolved and conscious need to connect online and develop our brand identities.

Twitter, the micro-blogging service has been around since March 2006 but was used predominantly by tech developers to share ideas. It allows users to post up to 140 character updates via text, email, Twitter’s website and a host of third party applications.

As a journalist, I first discovered it as an extra online feed to track breaking news and eye witness accounts of major events. The often mundane chit-chat that occurs between followers and recipients was of little interest and I didn’t feel the need to take part.

That changed when a digital PR challenged my perception of Twitter and asked if she could prove to me its power and effectiveness as an online communication tool. She persuaded me to set up my own Twitter page and then she posted a tweet to alert both her followers and the open ‘Twitterverse’ that I was someone worth following.

The initial result was instant, and overnight I gained a small audience of followers. I was intrigued that if a crowd of strangers were following my brand communication (Tweets) based on a referral, what could Twitter do to build online communities?

After all, Jonathan Ross was using it to keep his fan-base, plus the Daily Mail interested whilst he served his suspension from the BBC. And other celebrities soon saw the power of being able to communicate their brand on a more social level and have been signing up in their droves ever since.

One of my first tweets was a request for events people to reveal themselves and Kate O Neil from Cocktail Stars answered my call.

Since then, we’ve built a network that includes, among others Conference and Incentive Travel magazine, Visit London and Simon Burton, the founder of industry social network Event Crowd. Others have joined following a blog post by head of marketing for events at Merlin Entertainments, Peter Kerwood on Event magazine’s website. And by twittering key words, agencies such as Jack Morton and George P Johnson in the US have found me and opened a global channel of live marketing conversation.

I’ve proved to myself that Twitter also works as a crowd sourced Q&A tool. I did this by posing research questions to the Twitterverse instead of turning to Google. The Tweets have resulted in worthwhile help and advice from complete strangers every time.

The fact is that people who Twitter are more likely to engage with one another both online and in person. This can lead to business conversations, referrals or opportunities we would otherwise have missed.

In fact as I write this, more than 175 cities around the world are hosting Twestivals, bringing together local Twitter communities in face-to-face environments for one global evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for Charity: Water.

We are still the early adopters of Twitter but its growth is predicted to be faster than Facebook. As a powerful new way to communicate, track conversation and converse with others, what benefits could it deliver for your brand?

Prankster Paul & the dotcom April Fool

A warm round of applause for friend and digital impresario, Paul Walsh. The chair of the British Interactive Media Association alerted internet techies yesterday to the news that he'd sold his web certification company Segala. He broke the news on his Facebook update at 12.30am. During the morning, plaudits flooded in on Twitter and Facebook from envious entrepreneurs and well wishers. As I'm sure everyone now realises, it was all Irish blarney and an April Fool. Talking to Tech Crunch, Walsh said: "I did it as a laugh, I wanted to see what the power of my status update was. How influential it was."
Consider the age we live in where even an April Fool's Day prank has a digital application. The moral of the story? Don't trust everything you read on the internet and web techies are a gullible lot.

Word of mouth: The Scrabulous way

With every craze, there comes a moment when the magic starts to fades. Facebook is no different. The social networking site still handles 600 million searches and more than 30 billion page views a month but has received an increased amount of negative press recently. Fears are growing amongst its users that their privacy is no longer their own and the possibility of identity theft is all around them. Now, the site's most addictive application Scrabulous is under threat from a take down order issued by Mattel, which owns Scrabble in the United States and Canada, and Hasbro, which holds the rights for the rest of the world. The loss of Scrabulous due to trademark infringement would chip away a further edge from Facebook's appeal and set a benchmark for future disputes. But has Mattel completely missed the point? And more importantly, is it giving up an opportunity to tap into the advocacy an online platform is creating for its brand?

Facebook hasn't really got a leg to stand on. The Scrabulous application is after-all a complete rip-off from the board game. But for physical companies to thrive in a world dominated by new media, they should focus on the opportunity before reacting to the threat. At this point there are more than 600,000 active users of Scrabulous. Dozens of Facebook groups have been created to “save Scrabulous.” The biggest had more than 23,000 members.

The board game prospered in the 1980s. But with advances in computer game technology and the growth of the internet, many board games now only come out for Christmas. Surely, Mattel should first look at sales of Scrabble in the past 12 months and decide if Scrabulous has reinvigorated interest in the game. The marketing boys should then seek to buy the application. If they can't buy it, then sponsor it as the official Scrabble game on Facebook. Failing that, allow the scrabble brand a new lease of life as the game of choice amongst online communities. Then, seek out the next branded content opportunity. Brand reach across online platforms is limitless. And word of mouth advocacy has seen the scrabble brand back in everyone's vocabulary.

Will cabbies make good brand advocates?

As brands look to events and word of mouth to create advocates out of media savvy and often cynical consumers, the idea of sending cabbies off on holiday, courtesy of tourist offices made me chuckle. London's Hackney Cab drivers are being offered free trips to places like Bangkok and the Caribbean in the hope that they'll wax lyrical to unsuspecting passengers about their amazing experience, sending them packing their bags and booking flights.

One Evening Standard columnist responded today by saying that if there was a chance she'd be stuck in the same resort as a London cabbie for two weeks, she would rather spend her hols in Bognor. Anyone that's spent a 15-minute cab ride rolling their eyes at right wing views or being forced to endure what's wrong with bendy buses will no doubt empathize.

The problem is, that for advocates to cast their spell we need to believe in them and hang off their every word, not fake a phone call. That's why, when a friend tells you how they received priority booking and VIP treatment before a gig at the O2, we seriously consider changing mobile networks. And it's why advertisers are queuing up to reach Facebookers, safe in the knowledge that word of mouth between friends is a powerful marketing tool and the more friends you have, the greater the prize.

The hotel concierge is a trusted advocate. The cabbie, you trust to deliver front door keys to a flat-mate sat on the doorstep or navigate you around the gridlock. As soon you step out of the taxi and bid your farewell, the likelihood is that you've already forgotten whatever it was he was banging on about.

The last time i got into an discussion of note with a Black Cab driver, i'd innocently suggested that London needed to follow the example of New York and get more licensed taxis out on the street. I'd just walked for 20 minutes through Soho, down to Trafalgar Square and out towards Embankment on a rainy Wednesday night looking for a cab with its light on. I thought i'd have the support of my driver, after-all there's no shortage of demand, or so i thought. Judging by his response, i'd inadvertently threatened his livelihood. Apparently, according to him, taxis can drive around London all day without so much of a sniff of a fare and pushing more people through the Knowledge will result in New York's situation of having only a minority of English speaking drivers.

A Mori survey published this week states that the daytime wait in Inner London for a taxi is 24 seconds and 22 seconds in central London. Piccadilly Circus is apparently the best place to find a cab, with the average wait being just 10 seconds. So, there is no shortage of Black Taxis, London doesn't need more qualified, licensed and regulated drivers and I'm just about to book a holiday that was recommended to me by Ron from Chingford who's just dropped me off.