MMCC: A Conference To Be Reckoned With, But Still More Room To Grow

Last week I was at ASAE's MMCC 2015, which is starting to gather numbers large enough to put it squarely on the list of Important Annual Conferences Not to Miss. With over 1,000 attendees, this was the biggest MMCC ever, but as Dave Martin's event wrap-up blog notes, the conference has lots of areas for improvement (don't we all?). 

Since we all have room to grow and improve, I'd say that there is no better way to help grow and support MMCC than for all of us to chip in and do more as MMC'ers. Whether you consider yourself a membership, marketing, communications or technology person (anybody out there a blend?), it's important that we support this new area of growth.

Here's my top areas where we could all chip in & help to continue the good works that ASAE has started with MMCC:

Utilize Your Partner Channel for Post-Event Content Distribution

As I cited in my 3 Tips to Boost Your Event Marketing article in this month's Associations Now, one of the top issues for event planners is that there is not a strong event marketing plan for the post-event period. It's why so many of us fall into what I call the Post-Event Valley of Depression, and for which I developed many a slide deck during my tenure at etouches: 

What is this depression that hits in Day Two (or the last day of the conference)? It's the fact that the morning of Day Two kicks off great with a powerful speaker like Sekou Andrews (love this guy, have seen him 5 times now...at least) and a recap video pulled together of Day One like this:

but then the content cadence of Day Two doesn't escalate to a crescendo-type of close and instead fizzles out. In fact, there was no closing of Day Two, with zero rallying cry to marketers to get out there and change the world, which is a typical standard in most corporate marketing conferences (or, at least an inspirational speech that verifies that you are the badass that you think you are).

After searching on YouTube and using deductive reasoning that a Day Two post-video must exist, I found the following wrap-up video (but it really re-used a lot of Day One in it--I'll let that slide under the Repurposing Clause): 

This is a great video & there are many individuals who would enjoy watching it if nothing else to see if they know anyone on video and what the conference looked like in terms of attendance. The big issue with post-event is time and distribution. One great way to get out the message post-event is to have a partner marketing channel already spun up whereby you can just push the video out and everyone is committed to picking it up and adding their own blog, tweet, post, etc. around it. Understanding content marketing in a partner setting is critical to hit optimal distribution and is under the marketing discipline of channel marketing (another area that needs more education and you don't hear much about in the classic association world).

Event Host Should Plan a Continuous Social Calendar & Partners Should Contribute

The issue with twitter hashtags, in particular, is that there are huge spikes in their usage during the live event and then no one knows if the activity will continue or if total Post-Event Valley of Social Depression has occurred. Here are a few tips you could always do:

• Why not tell attendees the length of time you'll use the hashtag so that they can find attendee directories, presentation content, videos, etc? Tell them before leaving the meeting, in the mobile app, in the program guide, on the event website, via social & email. 
• Ask your partners & attendees to continue to use the hashtag as a permanent way to crowdsource content, vote for topics, ask relevant questions & connect with experts during the interim if you're having a year-over-year event. Why would your exhibitors not participate unless they just don't get digital? Talk about an extra value-add to the exhibitor dollar without additional work on the part of the association. (Living in fear that exhibitors will go salesy on you? Who cares! It's not your purchased hashtag--it's just a hashtag---let them out themselves as faux thought leaders.)
• Ask your speakers to continue to add to the hashtag and/or host a twitter chat. Assign them a specific week and have them promote their original content, write a blog post around it or hold a live webinar that you'll record as a way to re-ignite and repurpose your live content (as let's fact it, most associations aren't recording live sessions, or if you do, no one knows where the content goes).

Put Together a Cross-Functional Event Team

One of the biggest observations I had while working directly in the event industry and then coming back to the association industry is that event planners and event content creators typically just don't get digital. While the event industry is getting more technical every day, it is usually because event teams are being transformed into having working relationships across a variety of departments and staffed with a multitude of modern skillsets. The classically trained event people just have too much to do in terms of logistics and crafting the live experience that it seems there is never time for digital and it's left as an afterthought for the marketing folks. Worse, it's seen as just a promotional channel to get butts in seats and is flat-out abused in its ability to push promotions at a very low usage cost (although, no one is measuring the damage cost to the organization's reputation by abusing digital channels in order to sell).

Another observation is that it's almost impossible for a digital marketer to break into the event team because short and closed answers such as "it's too late for that", "we can't change the live format", "there's nothing we can do now" are often the responses met with ideas for how to infuse digital into live event programs (even webinar programs are not immune!). What's an event to do with really adding digital? 

The answer is that everyone has to commit to stopping--even if for one day--and commiting to planning from a mobile-first, modern-first event mindset. As Steve Mackenzie of etouches presents in our HighRoad U Innovation Seminar, you can keep the essence of the event and update how it's delivered. This is much the same for events that need more digital. Some of the big drawbacks to MMCC were the inconsistent/bad quality WiFi (so typical of a convention center who also doesn't get it yet), the mobile app that I couldn't even open because I've used it for previous events and it just sucked everyone else's phone dry and the inability to interact with social channels in any meaningful way. 

While it may be too much to expect the event host to come up with all the ideas, certainly the crowd attending MMCC--marketers & communicators themselves--would have come up with a great crowdsourced list of ways to interact with live and virtual attendees. In fact, we could have asked them to provide solutions broken down by Free, Small Fee, Medium Fee & BHAG-Fee levels. Wouldn't we all love that list? 

Understanding how the MMCC event was planned and executed would be even better. I'd love to know if marketers were actually involved or if this was just the events team putting on another event with the marketing group supporting the brochure and all content sourced through committees. There's nothing better than explaining who your cross-functional event team is and how you decided the bones of the event. 

You know what would be even better? 

Ask, Ask, Ask & Ask Some More. Provide Space for Asking & Encourage Asking.

If there's one thing that a target audience (if it's really targeted) knows is what they want to learn about during an event. In today's modern world of continuous feedback loops, there's nothing worse than having an event without continuously asking question after question after question. Especially during a live event, I would poll people, send them to discussion dens, send out factoids and ask them to do evaluations after every session on mobile and at kiosks. Why not have roaming event staff to get Real Time Floor Feedback? Get the data, get the quotes, get the pictures and see your job as collecting & distributing feedback.

Then ask the crowd what they think on the collected feedback. Why Not? 

Crowdsource More Content

Finally, use your position as a publishing platform to publish other people's tweets, pics & videos. Ask for a call for event assets and ask people to participate. Finally publish all of those photos your photographer takes, or better yet, get a REALLY good photographer that takes amazing pics and allow people to buy them of themselves. Who doesn't want that in a time of social media? 

Why not create a Pinterest board and let everyone pin? Make it fun, trust that the majority of people will not abuse the system and continue the event happiness.

Reminding people of the fun they had, the amazing tidbits and learning takehomes is the key to warding off the post-event depression syndrome. Use the attendee community to cement the memories, build greater rapport and connect people. Watch how this helps for future registrations---it certainly will work much better than sending an early bird email for the 4th time! 

Use your community for it's ultimate purpose---adding the emotional and intellectual glue that makes events valuable.