Social Media Experts: 6 Experts On Amping-Up Social Media For Events

When it comes to organising events, social media is becoming more and more essential to planning and promoting the event, as well as connecting with guests and clients.

It’s not just about creating brand awareness or sending out promotional posts: social media has become the new business card. Guests want to trade information immediately and they expect mementos of the event to go up online before it’s even over.

For designers and organisers, sites such as Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest accounts which allow them to gauge what audiences will respond to and to spread awareness of their work and creations. Meanwhile, clients can easily collaborate with them on designs and give feedback instantly to ensure that the final event truly delivers.  

To learn more, we asked 6 industry experts to give us their insights into making the most of the online world.

Edward Poland, Hire Space | Twitter: @HireSpace

[clickToTweet tweet=”Events are increasingly about engagement and experience.” quote=”Events are increasingly about engagement and experience, and not just on the day – modern event planners need to think about engaging audiences before and after events too.” theme=”style5″]

Start the conversation early, bring it to a head at the live event, and summarise it through every available channel afterwards. Events are increasingly one part of a story, and event planners plan for this as much as they plan for the live event itself.”

Christy Lamagna, Strategic Events | Twitter: @sme_events

“The most important changes happening to the events industry is acknowledging that it is in the nascent stages of evolving from being logistic-centric to strategic.

That means planning events around confirmed, established goals, helping frame content and building a communications strategy around your events that solicits target audience input on what they want out of the event’s content.

[clickToTweet tweet=”By focusing on goals, events are going to be a crucial part of a organisation’s sales cycle and marketing messages.” quote=”By focusing on goals and how to achieve them through logistics and putting a laser focus on achieving goals, events will shorten sales cycles and become integral parts of organisation’s sales and marketing messages.” theme=”style5″]

This progression will affect not just events, but the people who are doing the planning, giving them and their efforts the respect they warrant.”

Ida Kroell, EventLand | Twitter: @eventlandnyc

“In an technological ever-changing world the events industry is booming. The internet has created an even greater need for people to meet in-person.

Companies want to spend more funds on flying people in from near and far to participate in highly branded, qualitative in-person time. Knowledge-sharing can be done online.

[clickToTweet tweet=”In-person meetings are about networking, bonding, and creating new knowledge via innovative workshop experiences.” quote=”Today the in-person meetings are about networking, bonding, and creating new knowledge together via innovative workshop experiences. ” theme=”style5″]

Adrian Segar, Conferences That Work | Twitter: @asegar

[clickToTweet tweet=”The meetings industry is experiencing a massive movement away from the traditional format of pre-determined content.” quote=”The meetings industry is experiencing a massive movement away from the traditional format of pre-determined content shared by speakers to a passive audience.” theme=”style5″]

Increasingly the industry is gravitating towards meeting formats that encourage and support meaningful and valuable connections around content that the participants choose on-site.

This movement is slow but consistent, because most meeting stakeholders and attendees don’t fully understand the increased value of of these new meeting approaches until they’ve experienced well designed sessions and meeting that use them.

But once they do, they rarely return to the broadcast-style meetings of the past.”

Baptiste Boulard, Swapcard | Twitter: @swapcard

[clickToTweet tweet=”Create a digital experience by moving from 100% offline experience to mix of online and offline experience.” quote=”“Create a digital experience move from 100% offline experience to mix of online and offline experience – like the retail industry did.”” theme=”style5″]

George Sirius, Eventsforce | Twitter: @eventsforce

[clickToTweet tweet=”The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of the most important changes facing our industry today.” quote=”The upcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is probably one of the most important changes facing our industry today.” theme=”style5″] The new legislation is coming into effect in May 2018 and will apply to ANY event collecting and processing the personal information of European attendees – regardless of location.

For event planners, it will change the way they decide what data needs to be collected from attendees in registration forms and apps and how that data is used for things like marketing and personalisation. It will change the way attendee data is shared with other third-party organisations like venues, sponsors and tech providers.

It will also change attitudes to data security and what measures need to be in place to keep attendee data safe. And let’s not forget about the fines. Compared to current data protection regulations, non-compliance to GDPR will lead to some very serious financial consequences so the events industry needs to be prepared.

But it’s not all bad news. GDPR will bring about some big opportunities for our industry too – those that can show they’re dealing with personal data in a transparent and secure way and have respect for the privacy of individuals will succeed in building a new level of trust. And this will be key in deciding which organisations people choose to deal with in the future.

If interested, have a look at this free eBook ‘The Event Planner’s Guide to GDPR Compliance‘, which explains why the events industry has to start taking responsibility for GDPR, its impact on event marketing, data management and event technology and what steps event planners need to take now to get ready for the May 2018 deadline.”

Making Space For Social Media At Events: Social Media Experts

The key focus when it comes to social media is how to ensure guests can connect with the event in the way they want to, while still putting your own spin on the design and ensuring guests make the most of the event on the day.

It’s often assumed that businesses and organisations will need to keep up with their audience but often it’s a case of demonstrating the value of using social media to clients and, as an event organiser, truly understanding what that value is.

We’ll be seeing more and more integration of social media at events from the consultation phase, to navigating the event on the day, to keeping the conversation going for weeks after.

Thanks to all these social media experts for their contribution. It’s important when navigating the online world that we understand both the opportunities and the risks.