A few people have argued against
spending time on promoting conferences through social media because there is no
evidence that it works. The difficulty
lies in the claim that social media can be used to attract more delegates to
attend a meeting.
It’s true that hobby events can
generate huge activity. It’s also true that, in spite of determined efforts by
some, this isn’t the case for professional conferences.
Look at the feeds for most conferences
and they’ll be mainly made up of promotional posts from the organiser, notes
from the organiser’s friends saying they’re excited to be going and posts from
commercial organisations trying to get attendees to go to see them.
But one feature of social media is
starting to play a role: it is increasingly becoming the first stop for anybody
who wants to complain.
And this is where a meeting planner can use it to
advantage. If somebody is monitoring the feeds, these complaints can be
spotted, acted upon and, most important, a response posted before the complaint
gets out of hand.
The difficulty then becomes one of
resisting the temptation to post a message reading ‘Did you bother to read the
joining instructions?’. But that’s a different issue.
Originally published in Conference News
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