Not your mamma's word of mouth

In a new day and age of constant communication it is important to make sure that the right messages are being sent out, that of course is not always possible. With millions of people tweeting and facebooking each day, on anything and everything, it is now more than ever important to realize that consumers and employees are really the ones who make the world go round, or at least your company.

When planning a company meeting social media can most definitely be your friend. You just have to know how to make sure to keep on top of things. After reading an interesting article in PSMA Convene, about Jeff Hurt’s rules on social media, I realized just how hard companies must work now to make sure the event runs smoothly. The phenomena of word of mouth has always been around. With multiple lines of communication literally at your finger tips, the old school version of word of mouth has taken on a whole new meaning.

There are a couple of tips that can help to make your event run smoothly along side social media, remember it can be your friend. First make sure that everyone who will be working the event is on the same page regarding social media aspects that will be present during the event. If you are allowing and encouraging guests to tweet and facebook you also need to have a plan to control a situation if those posts turn negative. It is also important that you designate times for your guests to use such media. Even though social media is being utilized at the event, you must also remain respectful to your speakers, this includes focusing on those presenting. I think its also important go get active with the social media. If you are having a speaker have them at some point in the presentation look at the posts. We no longer have to probe into people to get a discussion started. Once the question is out there on the web it can be used at a starting point for discussion, someone was obviously interested enough to post it, so they should be interested enough to discuss it.

Events working with social media and those not working with it should still hold the some of the same key aspects; Guidelines, contingency plans, and thought provoking conversation to spark a discussion. Adding the social media aspect just helps to gain visibility for those not attending, who will in turn hopefully attend the following year. If you would like to read more about Jeff Hurt’s tips and wisdom you can go to PSMA Convene’s website and check out that and much more.