Meetings 2.0 – how to leverage social networking tools to achieve incredible engagement

Terri Hardin has published an article in Successful Meetings Magazine this week on using web 2.0 or social networking sites to promote meetings, events, and conferences. The articles covers a lot of ground and aligns with what I presented at the Canadian IncentiveWorks show in August.

From my perspective, leveraging web 2.0 / social media sites are not just a new way to promote your meeting, event, or conference – it’s a shift in philosophy. Meetings as monologues are dead.

Although it’s true that social media is affording us new ways to reach our potential audience for promoting our events… the true power is in creating community – not just advertising within them. By creating your own social networking experience for your meeting (or leveraging somebody else’s), you can create meaningful interactions and value exchanges before, during, and after your event.

With traditional meetings, events, and conferences, the networking part begins once you show up & register. By creating your own community, you can facilitate meaningful interactions before people even show up. The social networking continues during your event and well beyond the conclusion of the event. Your community can now propagate, grow, and build momentum for your next event. A great example of this concept put to use is the social networking site launched as part of the Motivation Show in Chicago. Like most social networks, when you register you provide some profile information. For a meeting, event, or conference you may ask people to self-select issues that are important to them. You can then leverage this data to “match” like-minded people together who may have an interest in connecting at your meeting, event , or conference.

The Motivation Show is doing exactly this – some colleagues who have registered for this event have received emails highlighting the 10 people they need to meet at the conference.  The email is personalized, dynamic, and based on the criteria selected in the registration process. The email also includes links back into the social network to initiate a conversation or to do further investigation (or creeping as we call it on facebook).  

I’ve evaluated / piloted / implemented several white label social networking platforms and all the best ones also come with great community tools built-in – like RSS feeds, personal blogs, group forums, chat areas, user polls, and your own media bin where you can upload images, links, documents – or whatever.

Not everybody is going to participate in your community - but the early adopters will drive content and word of mouth will mean constant growth and continued engagement. You’re not likely going to reach 100% engagement, but it’s not unusual for events that leverage this type of software to see 30% or more of their audience engaged. In a world where we deem a good marketer as somebody who gets 3% return on traditional response mediums and great marketers as those who get 5% – don’t you agree that this is an area worth your attention and further investigation?