The 12 Days of Conference - Day Five

As we prepare for 2013 I am hosting a series of blog posts called "The 12 Days of Conference".  Each day a different expert from the meeting, convention planning, speaking and hotel industries will add their single best idea on how to create better events or other tips for how to improve the "Conference Attendee Experience" in the new year.

Get Productive: 

Use Video to Increase Engagement

By Neen James

Video is the future.

Video is changing the way kids learn at school –look at the way thought leader Salman Kahn and the Kahn Academy has flipped the way kids learn math.

Video is changing the way universities share content – look at the phenomenal enrolment numbers of online learning.

Video is changing the meetings industry.

If you want to increase engagement from attendees, vendors and speakers at your events in 2013 the way to do it is, yes you guessed it … video!

In our productivity consulting and speaking practice we use video in a number of ways to serve our clients. We have found using video has several benefits:

·         Great promotional tool for marketing before, during and after the event.
·         Start conversations between speakers and attendees early.
·         Content is in small digestible chunks for increased effectiveness.
·         Social media engagement skyrockets!

As a meeting planner you can leverage video by inviting all your speakers to create short videos explaining the benefits of their session to attendees. You will see major events in 2013 embrace this concept.

As a vendor you can leverage video by inviting attendees to visit your trade stand for exclusive offers and quality conversation.

As a speaker you can leverage video by sharing your content, building excitement for your session and suggest attendees engage with you before the event.

At Neen James Communications we send videos to our meeting planners to use in their promotional activities, we engage in social media with guests before the event using the hash tag for Twitter, LinkedIn discussion groups, Facebook conversations and Instagram.

We encourage all attendees watching the video to email us in advance their biggest productivity challenges (or whatever the topic we are keynoting about) and we can use these questions to customize the content for our program.

We send videos after the keynote to increase accountability to actions agreed in the keynote and also to embed the learning of key concepts.

Video is hands-down one of the most vital engagement tools for 2013 – how are you embracing video in your next event? Share your ideas with us here on our blog.

 

Neen James CSP is a productivity thought leader (and Aussie) who delivers engaging keynotes that have educated, and entertained audiences with real-world strategies that apply at work and life. She also provides mentoring to women and when she isn’t traveling the world on her Harley; she is collecting fabulous shoes!