Social media and websites for government meeting planners

January 13, 2011 By Carla Pendergraft, Owner Carla Pendergraft Associates Web Design & Consulting www.carlapendergraft.com [email_address]

Learning Goals
Discuss cloud-based and mobile meeting planning websites
Identify major social media technologies for planners
Learn about The Power of Weak Ties
Discuss the role of a meeting planner in creating new ties between people

Before We Start
Is there anything you want me to be sure to cover today?
Any burning questions?
Also: feel free to tweet or facebook about this presentation as we speak!
Listen for good sound bites that will get retweeted!

Slideshare.net
This presentation will be posted at:
www.slideshare.com/carlapen

Websites for Meeting Planners
Cvent.com
This service seems to have outlasted many others. HelmsBriscoe, among others, uses it to issue leads.
Eventbrite.com
Free if event is free; 2.5% + $.99/”ticket “+ credit card processing
Meetup.com
Mainly loosely organized, volunteer groups

Drawbacks
Most planners already have software installed on their computer to plan meetings, integrated with membership software
I have seen many cloud-based services come and go over the years. Before committing, you must consider: Will this service be around in 5 years?

Rise of Mobile
Many new apps are fighting it out in the marketplace.
Big 3 – iPhone, Android, BlackBerry
“ Native” apps – built specifically for the smartphone
Custom programming required to create “native” apps ($$$)
“ Mobile Friendly” – a web page that is easy to view on a phone.

Mobile Friendly
Big buttons and menu items
Push to call
Simplified information
Not a lot of text
Simple, big graphics

Sample Mobile Friendly Site

Mobile Apps (Native)
Conference schedules
Trade show map
Info on speakers and seminars
Personal agenda builder
Area information
Course notes, speaker downloads
Text alerts
ALL ON A TINY SCREEN!

Sample Mobile Apps for Planners
FollowMe - www.core-apps.com
EventKaddy - www.eventkaddy.com
EventLink – www.core-apps.com
EMA – www.epromeetingsapps.com
Zerista – www.zerista.com
ChirpE – www.a2zinc.net
Meetings2Go – www.meetings2go.mobi/

Drawbacks
Not everyone has a smartphone
Costs of these apps can be very high
They don’t usually publish their prices on their website.
New smartphones every year
Rise and fall of BlackBerry

Takeaway (hint: tweet this!)
Be sure your event website is mobile friendly!

Social Media and Meeting Planning
Facebook: 500 million users
Twitter: 106 million users
LinkedIn: 65 million users

Facebook demographics Source: Jeffrey Van Camp/Digitalsurgeons, Yahoo! News, 12/21/2010

Twitter demographics Source: Jeffrey Van Camp/Digitalsurgeons, Yahoo! News, 12/21/2010

Key Concepts – the long tail

The long tail and planning
How can this concept be applied to meeting planning?

The Strength of Weak Ties
Mark Granovetter – Wrote thesis at Harvard about this concept long before Facebook was invented. He observed that job offers often came from weak ties, not strong ones.
More open networks, with lots of loose connections and weak ties, are more likely to result in new ideas and opportunities than small, closed networks.

Strong and Weak Ties
Closed networks are similar to cliques
Are there any cliques that show up at your conventions?
How do we engage young people and new people who feel left out by these cliques?
How do we integrate young people into our networks so that we can benefit from their fresh, new ideas?

The Power of Ambient Awareness
Social media gives you ambient awareness of what’s going on in many peoples’ lives
You feel more connected to them as a result
You get a feeling for who they are
You listen to their ideas and learn from them
Twitter and Facebook are great examples of ambient awareness.

Clout
Power, or clout, does not automatically result from title or high pay grade.
Power within any organization often comes when an individual is at the center of many relationships.
People with many connections, both weak and strong, can act as a broker by bridging two networks.
In other words, by introducing people!

Let’s tie these together!
Ambient awareness can lead to weak ties between people
Loose, open networks are full of weak ties
As a planner, you create the opportunity for people to join new networks through conventions, seminars, and events
Resulting in learning, growth, and a greater sense of connectedness between people…

… and social media is a great way to engage and integrate people prior, during, and after your convention!

Social media & long tail
2,000 people on your email newsletter list
Usually they have passively accepted
300 people on your Facebook page
All of them actively “liked” your page
150 people following you on Twitter
All of them sought you out
The long tail here is that you are reaching people the way they want to be reached. You are using multiple forms of media and reaching more people as a result.

Facebook for planners
Facebook is based on personal profiles
You have to have your own profile first
You can create Groups or Pages for your events
You can create Events on your Facebook Page

Facebook Groups
These are networks with a membership
Mail goes straight to the member’s inbox
Try setting up a Facebook Group to help convention attendees get to know each other prior to the convention
Gen Y will be receptive to this idea.

Facebook Pages
People “Like” your Facebook page
You can put a “Like” button on your website
Set up a Facebook Page for the convention
Update it with info on speakers and presentations, with links to their websites

Twitter
Most of what I learn about social media and technology, I get from following smart people on Twitter.
They post a teaser statement and interesting links
Many uses for meeting planners

Twitter and Planning
Like Facebook, you’ll post info on speakers and their presentations
Teasers about social events
Reminders on deadlines
Set up a hashtag for the convention
Allows like posts to be grouped
#SXSW
#SGMP2011

Twitter During Presentations
“ Monitoring the back channel”
Very difficult to do while speaking
Have someone do it for the speaker
Encourage questions via Twitter
May get more participation from Gen Y this way

Text Message Marketing
“ Text sgmp2011 to 41411 for conference updates”
Textmarks.com
Super easy to use! Try it with your officemates
Not very expensive. Monthly fee.
BIBISI.com
Advantage: Doesn’t require smartphone.

Photo Sharing
Encourage people to upload conference photos to Facebook
Set up separate Flickr account as an easy way to preserve images (flickr.com)
Make sure people know that if they upload photos, you might use them in materials.

Video
This is the future!
You will need to learn how to do simple videos and edit them.
Recommend Flip video camera (not HD)
Easy upload to YouTube

LinkedIn
LinkedIn profiles are so thorough that I feel I really know the person that I connect with.
Much smaller than the other networks, but still very important

Summary
As a meeting planner, you have a unique opportunity to be a broker between people to enhance their learning and personal opportunities.
You have true clout!
Consider using social media to extend your long tail clout and connect people prior, during, and after your conventions and events.

Social media and websites for government meeting planners

by Carla Pendergraft on Dec 26, 2010

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