Social media use in the meetings industry has gained significant traction in the past year, helping planners increase audience engagement, design educational programs, deliver a broader networking opportunity, garner instant feedback and provide new sponsorship opportunities.
"I've never seen a technological change happen so quickly," in the meetings industry, said meetings technology consultant Corbin Ball, president of Corbin Ball Associates. Wider usage of mainstream social networks by business professionals and technological advancement, including integrating social networking tools into online registration and conference Web sites has been pushing the move to greater adoption for meetings and creating a seamless link between meeting organizers and attendees.
Organizations now are trying to figure out their overarching social media strategy by deciding who will be responsible for the technology, which tools to implement and how to attract users, Ball said.
Meetings industry-specific private-label social networking platforms, such as Jot, Pathable and Zerista, have taken steps to integrate with online registration systems. Until recently, social media event platforms had been separate from other technology, requiring their own registration.
The industry has hit the "elbow" in the adoption curve in the last six months, said Pathable CEO Jordan Schwartz, with organizations asking "how, rather than questions of whether or why." When the company built the capability to enable attendee profile integration with online registration systems, user adoption jumped 30 to 40 percent, he said.
The National Association of Chain Drug Stores began using Twitter in the second half of last year and is now using the platform "judiciously to try to see what the right use of it is for everybody," said senior vice president for meetings and conferences Jim Whitman. "We want to make sure that what we're doing is accurate and reflective of what NACDS is about. We're trying to figure out what is going to be best, first and foremost for the attendee and then NACDS."
To meet members' requests to communicate with each other in real time, the Association of American Medical Colleges used Twitter to send out speaker and logistical information for its annual meeting, said director of meetings Kirsten Olean.
"There was a whole conversation that happened from people in the meeting tweeting about our meeting, and it was interesting insight. It was good feedback for staff, but we had a small number of followers," said Olean. "It was an interesting experiment, because it didn't cost anything, and we'll probably continue to do it for next year, but our members aren't beating down the door telling us we have to have a Facebook page or do Twitter."
Global information services and publishing company Wolters Kluwer's senior managers have started to assess a social media strategy, according to senior events manager for the company's Corporate Legal Services division Phyl Monroe. "The nut has been cracked," she said. "We don't have real data yet that we are missing a marketing opportunity or are so far behind the curve."
Association management company SmithBucklin recently created a social media committee to help its clients experiment with the technology." The key is putting the foot out there and trying some stuff," said SmithBucklin executive vice president of event services Brad Weaber.
Technology consultant Ball said the private-label platforms have fairly simple pricing models. According to Schwartz, Pathable charges an $875 set-up fee per event, with a $3 to $6 charge per attendee depending on meeting size.
While these platforms could cost thousands of dollars per event, new sponsorship opportunities can offset those costs.
Meetings management consultant Mary Boone, president of Essex, Conn.-based Boone Associates, said the value of sharing ideas and having instant feedback far outweighs those costs. She is in the process of implementing a social media tool for a corporate client's internal senior leadership meeting that enables the executives to exchange ideas and commentary in a specific threaded discussion environment.
"The ideas that were exchanged in that meeting and the impact that it could have on the strategy makes $10,000 look like a drop in the bucket," said Boone.
The widest use of social media for events has been by associations and for such external corporate events as product launches and user conferences. Corporations, though, generally are reluctant to implement the tools for their internal events. That is true for Carlson Wagonlit Travel's 300 corporate meetings and events clients in North America, according to Tony Wagner, the region's vice president of meetings and events, who attributed the lack of traction to many internal corporate meetings dealing with proprietary information and industry regulations.
Even organizations that have experimented with social media are cautious to implement a wide-ranging tool. "At the leadership level," said Association of American Medical Colleges' Olean, "and this is true at many organizations, there is a fear of lack of control, and you don't have control over social media. It is an open forum, people can say what they want to say, and that makes people nervous. Our strategy is definitely cautious, but we are getting there."
Originally published Feb. 15, 2010