This might be a social media world in which we live in but this should not mean – certainly not in our business – that we attempt to conduct all our business relationships via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or any other platform you care to shake a stick at.
‘People buy people’ says the old adage and I’m a great believer in getting in front of others to work out face-to-face what makes them tick, what they’re looking for and how we can help their business.
This is why the recent run of expos has been a great opportunity both for brokers and service providers. Getting everyone under one roof can do wonders for an individual firm and the providers that are seeking to distribute through them. Brokers can find a plethora of lenders, providers, distributors, etc all under one roof and can build relationships in the course of one day that normally would take weeks and months to generate.
Having said this, embracing social media is a great way to interact with an event, learn about what’s going on, check out the gossip and develop a relationship. It’s even more important when you’re unable to attend an event. This was my predicament with a recent event which I shall not name but was held somewhere in East London.
As Blacks Connect had decided not to exhibit, and I had some commitments in the diary so couldn’t make it, I thought I would use social media, Twitter to be exact, to get a feel for it and to interact with those who were there.
To say I was left disappointed by my attempts to do this would be an understatement. Not only was there no official hashtag for the event, which made it difficult to follow what was happening, there was also a distinct lack of proactive tweeting from the organisers and it was being left to exhibitors to use their own feeds to try and generate ‘buzz’ and get news from the exhibition out to a wider audience.
To my mind this appeared to be a real missed opportunity especially considering some of the competitor events which have taken place over the last month or so. These appeared to understand that making the event as easily accessible from social media as possible would help not just those exhibiting but those attending.
Simple things like an official hashtag – although people will always go off-piste – can make a real difference and making sure exhibitors referenced the official feed also gave the tweets a focal point.
We all have to accept, that whether we like social media or not, a lot of activity takes place on it and many people get their information from it. Think of the way we watch TV now – people tend not to sit there with just the remote control but also their tablet or phone passing comment and determining whether a show is going to be a success or not. This is also true for the events we attend, be they personal or business. Opinions matter and they shape the way future events will be perceived.
You cannot stand idly by with social media. If you do then you are risking a negative perception and you are in some way leaving the success of your work down to others.
