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How Meeting Planners Can Use Foursquare to Promote Meetings

Foursquare, a location-based social network that allows users with smartphones to “check in” at venues, is one of the most up-and-coming social media sites on web. It is perfect for increasing engagement because it combines the fun of social media with incentives and viral messaging.

Users “check in” at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application. They are then awarded points and in some cases, “badges” for certain activities.

If social networking sites connect people to people, then Foursquare should be thought of as connecting people to places making it the perfect social media tool to promote your next meeting:

1. Drive attendance.
Many of the already existing badges for Foursquare can be leveraged for this purpose. Foursquare has two badges that are rewarded based on a crowd of users checking in.

If 50 people check in, a “Swarm Badge” is unlocked, and if 250 people all check in the same venue and time period, a “Super Swarm Badge” is unlocked.

When promoting an event where there is a possibility to get this badge, people will usually promote this to all their peers in the attempt to gain more people to check in to ensure the badge is awarded.

2. Post tips and information in real time.
Foursquare has a “Shout” or “Ping” function that allows you to send a mass message out to friends and users. This tool can be leveraged to make announcements, which can be received  via mobile applications. There is also a function to post tips or instructions on the venue’s Foursquare page.

3. Gather demographic and business data.
As a venue owner or manager, or as the agent promoting that event/venue, you can “claim” the ownership, and then Foursquare allows you to utilize and view the robust back-end analytic package connected with each site.

Here you can find out such things as who is checked in, the frequency they have done so, their Twitter username (if public), whether they are male or female, and any tips or suggestions they have made about the site.

Once the meeting is over, make sure to go back and track your Foursquare page. See who checked in, how many tips were left on the venue page, and how many people took advantage of the check-in promotion. These results will help your social media marketing for the next meeting; what worked and what didn't.

So broaden your horizons from solely Facebook and Twitter. The age of social media is everchanging, and it is your job (as well as many others) as a meeting planner to stay on top of it. It not only increases awareness for your meetings and venues but also allows the attendees to market your event for you.

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Selecting The Right Technology For Your Meeting

You have just been given the daunting task of planning the next big corporate meeting for your company. But before you even have a chance to ask what the proposed date is, questions and ideas start flooding your head. What is the budget? How many people will be attending? 200 people? Which conference center will hold that many people?

The stress of meeting planning can be all too overwhelming, but thankfully there are tons and tons of meeting planning technology products that can perform nearly every job in planning that successful meeting. The problem is not every product is "one size fits all." The right meetings technology solution can bring a huge benefit in cost, time savings and customer service. The wrong choice can be far more costly than just the price of the software and implementation.

So how do you choose which ones will be beneficial for you and your company? This article will help decide on the most efficient technology products for your meeting and eliminate the ones that may be insignificant.

Inventory your office. 
First before anything else, examine your current office environment. Determine what is currently being used and what could use modification. Here are some questions that need to be posed:

• What meetings processes are being managed via paper?  Do you maintain a large file cabinet of meeting facility information? Do you send your RFPs via fax? Are you accepting registration via the mail or fax? Do you use paper surveys? Do you draw and update your exhibit plan by hand? Do you schedule your rooms manually? A piece of paper is a white flag of inefficiency. Often these should be the first targets to be considered for technology upgrades.
• What over-the-counter software (Excel, Word, Access, etc.) are you using? If you are relying on these (especially word processing files) for your meeting planning processes, this should be a warning.  Flat files (i.e. word documents) are highly inefficient in terms of managing data from meeting to meeting. 
• What meeting planning software and other technology tools do you currently use? What works well and what doesn't?  Are there newer versions that will work more efficiently?
• What is the budget and time frame to change?

Determine which types of solutions are needed.
After inventory has been completed, examine the issues found. The next step is to determine which solutions will be needed to solve these technology problems. As stated earlier, there are tons of technology tools that can assist in meeting planning. Here are some areas where technology can help:

• Attendee matchmaking and networking
• Budgeting
• Badge making
• Customer Relations Management (CRM)
• Event web sites and portal management
• Exhibit sales and floor plan management
• Groupware and online collaboration
• Housing and room block management
• Incentive tracking
• Lead retrieval
• Marketing, communication and attendance building
• Meeting specification
• Meetings consolidation, procurement and request for proposal (RFP) management
• Onsite technology (registration, cyber cafes, product directories, internet access)
• Registration
• Scheduling
• Site selection
• Surveys
• Travel and ground transportation management

Decide on specific features needed.
Once you have narrowed down what you need, the next step is to develop a list of specific features required. Brainstorm a feature list of specific features desired in the “ideal” system. 

Once the list is compiled, it should grouped by feature area and ranked (must have, good to have, nice to have but not necessary). Delete the ones that, upon further review, are not deemed important.

Evaluation and selection 

Now you are ready to to start looking at technology vendors. Here are some steps that will help the vendor evaluation and selection process:

1. Determine the list of technology vendors providing the desired technology tools or services. 
2. Narrow down your choices to a select few (3-5 choices)
3. Set up full product demonstrations. Depending on the size of the sale and the elaborateness of the products, these can either be in person or via web demo. Software companies often have a demo version.
4. Make the final selection from the information gathered.
5. Set up a full implementation and evaluation timeline.

Implementation

The final steps are to implement the solution, train the staff, and set up measurable criteria and goals for successful deployment.  These goals should be centered on measurable decreases in meeting management costs, fast meeting turnaround, and/or improvement of customer services – often all three. With the successful addition of these technology products your meeting planning will become easier and more efficient. 

These technology product guidelines are accredited to Corbin Ball, CMP. Ball is a consultant, writer and speaker focusing on events and meetings technology. With 20 years of experience running international citywide technology meetings, he now helps clients worldwide use technology to save time and improve productivity. He has been named by MeetingNews Magazine for 4 years as one of the “25 Most Influential People in the Meetings Industry. He is also MPI’s 2002 International Supplier of the Year. He can be contacted at his extensive web site: www.corbinball.com.

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Tech Tuesday: QR Codes In The Meeting Industry

We've started seeing them everywhere. Listed at the bottom of a business card, under a signature on an email or even screen printed on a T-shirt, these QR codes are popping up everywhere and are taking futuristic steps from physical to virtual reality. But what exactly are these codes, and why are they so important for tech savvy people in the meeting industry?

QR codes, or Quick Response codes, are two-dimensional bar codes that contain all sorts of information that can be read by a bar code reader, or more importantly, a smartphone. In the age of fast paced and ever-changing technology, it is the job of a meeting planner to stay up-to-date on the trends. And while QR codes just recently became a staple for businesses in the past few years, meeting planners have a great advantage in utilizing these codes to benefit their company.

As common knowledge goes, no one can go anywhere without their phone these days, which is what makes QR codes ideal. The ability of taking your smartphone phone out of your pocket and scanning one of these codes is what makes this new technology so practical.

Small and compact, QR codes can pack a lot of information allowing creative planners to use them in as many ways as they can think of. Since they can be printed onto virtually anything, takeaways at trade shows are being seen with these little black and white bar codes all over them - mugs, canvas bags, the booths themselves, etc.

So how do you get started on creating QR codes for your company? Well it's quite simple, actually. There are many free websites that will convert a URL, video, or just plain old text to a fancy, technology forward QR code.

An example site that will generate QR codes is qrcode.kaywa.com. This website actually has a QR code reader app that you can download from your smartphone, making it a one-stop-shop for getting into the QR code frenzy.

But, as stated earlier, the field of technology is highly fast paced and ever-changing. So for today we have QR codes, but we never know what new and improved innovation might come out tomorrow. Meeting planners, it is your job to stay on top of current technology. It will benefit you and your company in the long run!

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