PLENARY Low-Fat, High-Protein Q How to “Like” Social Networks
UNCONVENTIONAL Hold the Carbs ‘‘P
LEASE STOP THE MADNESS,” author, entrepreneur, and speaker Dayna Steele wrote in
on open letter to event planners, posted on Fast Company’s FC Expert Blog, where she is a contributor. The “all carbs, all the time” approach —
“bagels for breakfast, sandwiches with may- onnaise and pasta salad for lunch, and pasta with cream sauce and potatoes for dinner” — is unhealthy, Steele wrote, and not conducive to productive meetings:
Please offer low-fat, high-protein items
for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Not only will the world thank you at these events, but you will also have a more focused, alert audience. For every carb and sugar gram you put into these people, the more you lose them. Isn’t the whole point to get your message across to your audience? How can you do that when the entire audience is either starving or tak- ing a carb- and sugar-induced nap? Grilled chicken, a scrambled-egg bur- rito (corn tortilla, no potatoes), steamed vegetables, a vegetable platter, light yogurt, fresh fruit — these items may cost a little more for your event, but your audience will walk away with your message intact instead of leaving in a coma with no idea what they just heard. n
(Third Parties) continued from page 19 Peckinpaugh thinks that the
upswing also suggests that organizations learned something from their behavior “post-2008, when everyone pulled back on their incentives, on their meetings.” He said: “They realized their business suffered because of the lack of holding those. A lot of companies tried different virtual solutions either exclusively or as
28 pcma convene December 2011
part of their overall mix, and while they worked to some degree, they didn’t drive the bottom-line results.” As a result, there’s more of an appreciation for face-to-face and “the benefit that it drives to our customers, their partners, their suppliers, and their employers. These [live] events work, and work extremely well.” n — Christopher Durso
HEN PLANNING A MEETING, REALLY ask yourself, “How do I get people to share what’s happening here?”
You want to design events that get people to RSVP in ways that appear on social networks. People are 68 percent more likely to click on something that has social context than not, two times more likely to recall it 90 days from now, and three to four times more likely to buy and to recommend to others. If I were running a meeting, I would care very much about: Check-in — like Foursquare. [Using my mobile phone] I can check in and say, “I’m here at the meeting today.” Meeting organiz- ers can incentivize that or at least encourage it with signs that say, “Don’t forget to sign in,” and reminders that someone who checks in today will get a free something-or-other. Those are low-level ways to produce the check-in. When I check in, I’m including people who aren’t there. And conversations can occur. The “like” button — which I think is one of the most powerful interactions on the Web right now — does two things. One, it broadcasts a story to my friends that Matt has liked X meeting. But the second thing it does is enroll me in an ongoing marketing relation- ship — kind of like opting into an email list. n — By Matt Johnson, COO/chief disruption designer at Kinetic Fin (www.kineticfin .com), as told to Michelle Russell
SOCIAL NETWORKER: Matt Johnson said he has committed to not even using phrases like “building a community” or “igniting conversa- tions” any longer when talking about
social media. “It’s time that we started devel- oping actionable
models,” he said, “for creating business and consumer value” around social media.