Whether you call it the Great Recession or simply a down economy, something interesting has happened for professionals this year. They have found a way to keep up with the latest trends, lessons learned and discovered ways to pursue continuing education without causing a strain on their travel budget through the phenomenon known as Twitter. Twitter allows niche communities to share lessons learned as well as success stories they pick up at conferences and trade shows. Search Engine Strategies (SES), Forrester, and even global communities like the World Economic Forum have all encouraged their attendees and presenters to tweet updates, share key takeaways, and interesting facts to keep those who could not physically attend these events, involved virtually.
With the ease of tools such as UStream, YouTube, Flickr etc, organizations can share their education with the world without relying on their IT team. Blogging in Word Press and Blogger allows you to grab a photo from a conference posted on Flickr or a video clip and post it in one’s blog with little difficulty. Then one can promote the posting on Twitter using prominent key words that attract a global audience who may not have even heard of the event otherwise. People re-tweet when they find something valuable spreading the word across the virtual community in mere seconds. A perfect example of this trend can be seen by the tremendous growth of South by Southwest, or more commonly known by the hash-tag #SXSW. This little media conference blew up into a must-see event. With influential attendees such as Tony Hsieh of Zappos and Robert Scoble, the well known blogger, their outspokenness has helped South by Southwest achieve great success. With a simple thing known as a “hash-tag” one can mark what event they are referring to and where they are in the world. When you have only 140 characters to work with, this saves much needed character space as well. Most events will show the acronym with the year.
This week is my company’s Supply Chain Planning and Forecasting Conference #SCPF Anyone interested in the subject matter of Demand Planning, Supply Chain Forecasting field can get a birds-eye view of the event, who the well received speakers were, and what were the key points..
For example: @sc_planning “At IBF conf, one co noted that each % reduction in forecast error translated to $400K (per $1B in rev) in inventory savings. Wow! #scpf”
Our attendees are typically fairly new to Twitter so I will be encouraging them throughout the conference to tweet, passing onto the community a bit of knowledge and introducing our conference to new folks. They are also eligible to sign up as a member for a reduced fee if they tweet.
Prior to the event, those attendees can tweet about where they are having a drink or dinner to meet up with fellow attendees. After the event, this offers an opportunity to stay connected, follow those industry experts to see where they will be next, what book they recently published and continue learning from real world experiences. Different than Linkedin, where you may see someone update their status once a day, Twitter gives you the opportunity to see what a day to day experience is for someone else.
Communities are built through various methods, including people following others they would usually meet in person first as well as vice versa. Social networks will certainly never replace the onsite conference experience. However, when used either because of a schedule conflict, or to see what the event is all about before making the investment to physically attend as well as to find others with similar professional interests and job responsibilities, I think it’s brilliant. Education and knowledge is so easily accessible, this is just one more way to use Twitter, for the greater good. I am unable to physically attend # blogworld but I surely look forward to hearing all about it, live on tweetdeck. Everyone is a reporter, and the majority lets the world know unbiased who to pay attention to as well as follow.
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Constance is Senior Marketing Manager for a globally well known Supply Chain and Demand Planning Organization, the Institute of Business Forecasting and Planning. Her responsibilities include managing the loyalty and acquisition programs both online and offline to grow the business. Previously, Constance was the Lead Generation Marketing Manager for the Direct Response division of NBTY, a major multichannel American CPG company with well known brands such as Puritan’s Pride, Vitamin World and Doctor’s Trust. There, she was responsible for generating leads through Internet/Co-registration programs, Direct Mail (including prospecting modeled names), Direct Response TV, Direct Response Radio and other mediums. Constance was also responsible for converting leads to first purchase through contact strategy programs including email cultivation and direct mail. Prior to NBTY, Constance was Marketing Manager for the Institute of Business Forecasting, (IBF) for seven years. In that time, she has managed successful online and offline B2B campaigns. There, her main responsibilities included the development of measurable marketing strategies pertaining to all IBF events, membership and certification programs, as well as the company publication. Prior to joining IBF, Constance was the Marketing and Sales Manager for NYCRealtyDotCom. During this period, working for an online residential Real Estate Brokerage firm, she faced the challenge of marketing a new company in the crowded Manhattan real estate area. Constance holds a BS degree from Hofstra University with 15 credits shy of an MS degree from New York University. She is also a Certified Professional Forecaster (CPF) and member of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) as well as Marketing Profs.
