features: latest magazine features: Nurturing new media
Nurturing new media
Few companies can afford to ignore the social media phenomenon. From a geeky buzzword to a business must-have, its myriad applications and platforms are being adopted by Fortune 500 companies, exhibition powerhouses and independent planners alike.
Corbin Ball, a US-based professional speaker and consultant on meetings technology, believes that social media is a perfect fit for the industry.
“Meetings are the original social media, and associations are the original social networks. These tools tie in naturally to market events and engage attendees before, during and after the event,” he says.
The shifting statistics out there confirm the power of social media. Facebook alone has in excess of 400 million members and is viewable in 70 languages; 65 million users are now also accessing it via their mobile phones. LinkedIn, the online business community, boasts 60 million users and, in the past year, has witnessed a growth spurt with one million new members per month. Twitter logs 75 million users to date with 50 million tweets per day.
The growth in its usage has been fast-tracked by the global economic situation as companies look at ways of stretching the marketing dollar, as well as being a case of right technology at the right time. “Low or no cost is nice, but this trend is far larger than that. It speaks to humans’ natural desire to connect with one another. This is also why we have meetings,” remarks Ball.
Paul Parsons, director of interactive marketing for Dubai-headquartered web development company Western Voice, says that promoting events through social media is now an integral part of any event marketing campaign. “Initially, businesses looked at this being a new, innovative marketing channel that offered the added benefit of being ‘free’, but the driving force behind social media has been the social element of it. As user bases grew, businesses also couldn’t ignore platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn as highly targeted information distribution mechanisms for them, which were much more efficient than traditional media,” he comments.
One new community that is aggressively pursuing its membership and services agenda is i-meet.com. An online resource for meeting planners, it also doubles up as a marketplace for suppliers, blending contacts, industry insight, insider intelligence, special interest groups, a members-only supplier rating system and an online RFI tool.
Individuals can join i-meet to create an active profile of themselves as well as link it to other social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Companies can list themselves for free, or pay to have an enhanced entry.
In May 2010 the site reached the 20,000 member mark (with sign-ups from 140 countries), a number it plans to more than double by the end of the year. Europe and Asia in particular, are strong growth markets and i-meet.com already has local communities in over 30 countries.
MEETING A NEED
A late 2009 survey conducted by US-based Champion Exposition Services, which looked at the growth in the use of social media within the associations industry, found that 83 percent of respondents already use one or more digital tools, with 91 percent committed to using them in the coming year.
The expectation from clients and attendees that social media platforms are available is also growing, according to Ball. “Although this is more naturally embraced by the digital natives, everyone will be relying on these tools to make purchasing decisions, to communicate, to share ideas, to collaborate and more.”
According to Champion, the most commonly used digital tools are Facebook (67 percent), Twitter (54 percent) and LinkedIn (48 percent). However, according to the survey event planners are not leading the way as early adopters with the primary reason in signing up to new marketing tools driven by attendee demand (69 percent).
More and more planners are also using Facebook to ‘friend’ local on-the-ground contacts to cement fledgling business relationships and open up new communication channels.
While Facebook usage for pre-show attendee marketing is now a given, and 82 percent of respondents are already busy tweeting in the run-up to an event, other opportunities are being ignored. Only 33 percent of respondents are using video applications, with just 48 percent benefiting from discussion forums.
