Tag: Meetings Management

Making Lemonade

We recently heard of a fantastic idea for making the best of a bad situation and wanted to pass it along!

It seems an organization was forced to cancel their annual conference at the last minute due to the novel coronavirus pandemic (like many these days). Attendees made it clear they expected full refunds and the organization felt it could not risk angering its members if it did not give them their money back. Giving every attendee a full refund, however, would have meant the organization would end up with no revenue to offset their own non-refundable expenses, causing a huge loss for the organization.

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Tips for Integrating TikTok Into Your Conference or Event

What is TikTok?

TikTok logoIn 2014, a company called Musical.ly released an app designed to make it easy for anyone with a smartphone to upload short-looping videos of themselves lip-syncing songs. In 2018, Musical.ly merged with TikTok, another video-sharing service. Content generated with the app has quickly evolved beyond simple lip-sync videos to include just about any type of brief, viral content imaginable, including memes, pranks, and challenges. As of late 2019, the app has reportedly been downloaded 1.5 billion times and has an astounding 700 million active daily users.

From celebrities to college students, the platform has become a prime option for reaching new audiences and ensuring a brand is part of relevant trends and cultural movements. So if you want your conference or event to be at the forefront of social-media marketing and engagement, check out our tips for integrating TikTok.
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Snapchat Pro Tips

Snapchat has changed the way we think about video content on social media but has been challenging for many associations to understand and use for their audiences, while also being worth their time, energy, and resources invested into the app. Even still, it’s an important platform for associations to utilize as more people use Snapchat than Twitter, in terms of daily use. Disappearing content and unedited video are extremely popular with millennials, and Facebook, the most popular social media platform, predicts video content is the future of online engagement.

Here are the best practices we’ve found to work for associations:
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Making the Best of a PR Disaster

We all hope to avoid PR issues when planning a large conference or event. Although we hate to admit it, some things are out of our control and even the best-laid plans can go awry. We might find ourselves having worked on an event for years, only to get blindside by a controversy, like union strikes or North Carolina’s recent HB2 legislation, which forbids LGBT anti-discrimination protections. Amid all the uproar, meeting organizers can suddenly find themselves having to choose between moving a meeting or taking a hit on attendance.

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Think Like Your Attendees

Dave Lutz, over at the Midcourse Corrections blog, lays out six really good ways to improve your conference committee.

Here at ProposalSpace, we always try to see things through the eyes of our users, so we especially liked his recommendation to “Walk in the attendee’s shoes”:

Many conference committees evaluate potential sessions and speakers using more information than the attendees will see. Attendees make the decision to attend based on session title, session description, and learning objectives. Embrace a blind review process. It will help eliminate personal agendas and challenge the committee to evaluate the program as a paying attendee would.