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Control Your Content—or Someone Else Will
By Andrew Horsfield | September 16, 2009
A friend of mine who is an experienced meeting planner told me of a recurring nightmare she’s been having lately. In her nightmare, she is standing in a 5,000+ auditorium, with a very expensive band playing under an elaborate light and laser show, but only about 100 other people are there, including her and the sponsors. The rest of her conference is somewhere else, because someone sent out a tweet saying the band was terrible and they were going to a different party. In fact, the band was great—just not that tweeter’s cup of tea. The planner wants Twitter banned at conferences.
The Internet’s power to allow people to connect and communicate is almost unbelievable. And it is getting stronger and faster every day. Much like a speeding train, however, the faster it goes, the further off the tracks it can jump when something goes wrong.
If you aren’t putting procedures in place to control your conference’s content, you risk allowing someone else to offer their version to the world. And you will be left doing damage control afterwards.
Public relations firms have long understood the importance of being the first to give their version of events. It sets the agenda of the debate. Organizations must be aware that anyone, from a well-intentioned but misinformed member to an agitator with a particular agenda, can hijack the outcome of a conference by being first to post an alternate interpretation of the event on the Internet.
Whether it’s on a blog, on Facebook, Twitter, or next year’s hot social media site, if this incorrect information becomes the accepted version, your organization may be forced to play defense, and you can lose all the momentum built up during the conference.
The best defense against this potential problem is a good offense:
- Capture your conference’s content and get it out there first.
- Create your own story that moves you towards your strategic goals, and make sure that is the story your members and stakeholders hear first.
- Create summaries of your sessions, and put that information on your website—quickly.
- Encourage your members and stakeholders to visit the website.
- If appropriate, back up that information with a printed summary that can be distributed to interested parties, onsite or off.
Don’t count on your conference participants to spread the word accurately. Your people may have been in the room, but ask any police officer about the reliability of eyewitness accounts, and you’ll understand why you need to capture the information yourself.
It’s your conference and your content. Only you know how best to protect and promote it.
Topics: Meeting Design, Meetings ROI, Meetings Technology, Onsite Learning, Social Media, Virtual Meetings |