If you’re interested in hosting a destination conference or any other kind of corporate event, you need to know the best methods to hold your attendees’ attention and keep them engaged. In a recent study by the IRF, Social Media and Mobile apps were said to be at the top of most attendees’ and planner’s lists. Here is a list of things you need to know to ensure that you’re using the right technology for your event, and that it all runs smoothly.
Social Media is the future of meeting technology. It’s becoming a critical aspect of the overall meeting experience if you want to keep engagement levels high. But as critical as social media is becoming, it’s still very dependent on having a high quality Wi-Fi connection at your event location. It’s common for hotel pricing of Wi-Fi to be a little on the high side, so make sure your planners negotiate the right Wi-Fi package by having the correct number of attendees who will be utilizing the Wi-Fi as far ahead of time as possible.
Embrace Social Media – Some event planners will tell you that attendees will use social media to post non-business pictures during your event, so you shouldn’t use it at all. That’s the old school way of thinking. While it may be true that personal posts will get made, they will also utilize their devices for the event much more than not, and the amount of engagement it produces with your message negates any “personal posting” they may do.
Community Involvement – Use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to build communities around your event and to market it. Social media will help to extend the interaction period beyond simply being at the event. This engagement ensure that your messaging will carry on longer with your attendees than if you weren’t using social media.
Create A Hashtag For Your Event (#BestEventEver) – Whenever you post information and updates about the event on Twitter, you’ll use that hashtag; which allows users to get their hands on the information when they need it by simply searching for that hashtag. They can even use their setting to create email alerts whenever any tweets containing your hashtag are posted.
Calendarize It – You should post a save the date notice on any social media networks you are using, You can even send out event invitations through Facebook, and anyone who accepts your invitation will be automatically notified on Facebook when information or messages are posted to the event page. Remember the earlier you start the better!
Create Interest With Pinterest – Use Pinterest to post content that promotes your corporate event. For example, if you’re utilizing PowerPoint you can save the presentations as a picture file (JPEG, PDF or GIF) and upload the file onto Pinterest to share with attendees or people that could not make the event.
Create A Website For Your Event – Since you will have a limited amount of space where you can give out details and tell your story you should create and publish an event homepage- link the page from any social media network that you are using.
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Don’t Just Sell, Engage Your Followers – Don’t drown followers with nothing but promoting of the event- if all you do is sell they will tune you out and may stop following you all together.
Aggregate – Overseeing multiple social media accounts can be a nightmare. However, social media aggregators like Hubspot and Hootsuite are designed to simplify the complex task of managing all of your social media accounts (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, G+, LinkedIn). They let you make posts to several outlets at once, or to schedule a post on all outlets at a later date.
These are just a few ideas to help you make your event more engaging. But the world of technology is advancing every day, so keep up to date on the trends and technological capabilities of the modern meeting planner. If you’d like to hear about other innovative technologies that are trending for corporate meetings and events, or to speak with one of our team of experienced event managers, call us at 1-866-567-7432 today.
