Put yourselves in your audiences shoes.

This is the sound bite I get from my first session at social media week, a extremely interesting and effective session about “Social Media for Events” hosted by Like Minds.

Registered for an event, or am I?

Social media week in London had got off to a good start, that was until I got into the office and checked my email. Apparently the session “Social media workflow for news organisations and media outlets” was over subscribed so an email politely tells me to not bother turning up that very same evening despite being signed up and confirmed. Charming, why have I been accepted as attending, why when I revisit the event page does it say “attending”?

I’ve even left my gym kit a home safe in the knowledge that come six o’clock I’ll be attending his event. Well there’s that thought shattered. I don’t mind the event being over subscribed but you shouldn’t give people the impression that they are attending, when in fact they maybe not. Imagine if I’d traveled to London just for social media week to find out that actually the key events I thought I had committed to, hadn’t committed to me. It’s unprofessional and makes the socials media mantras being preached in event rooms seem hollow, after all you should practice what you preach. Is social media week listening to its audience?

Communication and User Journey #fail

I could live with the one event telling me extremely late in the day that despite what I had planned, I was not attending. Fine, it sometimes happens. But this wasn’t the only case (I only signed up to 3 events), the “Google / Google+ What’s going on and how it impacts your business!” event led to much confusion. I was mostly confused as to how professionals in social media and marketing came up with such a convoluted registering system?

Firstly, registering on the social media week website was not enough, you had to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page. Then find a linkedin link, login in, read some more confusing text, find the next link (amongst the choice of two) then click that before registering. Confusing? That’s just the start of it. Obviously no one has ever sent these people on a conversion optimisation course.

Then I received an email about the event, leaving me bemused.

“Please note that although you have clicked “Attend” button on Social Media Week’s website, this is fact is not an acceptance of your attendance, “

Ok that’s fine, I’ve already followed the long winded system of navigating around linkedin to register…

“Therefore, because you have NOT registered on LinkedIn and have not received a confirmation from myself, I regret to share that you cannot simply turn up due to the mentioned health and safety reasons. “

Erm, well I did register on LinkedIn? But I didn’t received a confirmation from you?

This poorly executed registering process left me confused to whether I was actually registered or not? In the end I actually didn’t attend. Only one out of the three events I registered for went smoothly, the other two failed in their execution. It left me a little disillusioned with both social media week and the companies involved in the particular events, in the end I gave up on social media week.

Simple Unified Registering System

Having said that those involved in the Social Media for Events (Like Minds) did a great job, provided a very interesting pannel discussion and useful insights for anyone at any level of expertise in social media. The registering system worked as it was supposed to, click the attend button and be confirmed – if there are still places available.

In future, social media week should use a unified event system for registering attendance that has to be followed by event hosts. No one wants to click on numerous links to different web pages/sites to confirm attendance, especially not to find out later via email that you were not in fact confirmed because you didn’t receive an extra email. Also, nobody wants to have their attendance to an event confirmed only to be cancelled the morning on the day of the event, why confirm a place in the first instance?

One of the key points I took from social media week was to put yourselves in your audiences shoes. Some companies hosting events at social media week have failed to do so.

Photo by br1dotcom