Layout Changes
The changes mostly affect the organization of elements on the platforms. Some are minor (a simple name change) and others can throw users off (the profile box and news feed swapped sides on the web platform).

The new tabs at the top of the desktop site and on the bottom of the mobile site basically rename existing features, group some elements together and add functions.

Home–This tab is your news feed, or the tweets of everyone you are following. In some ways, the changes within the feed make the site more like Facebook: Photos or videos in a tweet now drop down directly below the tweet instead of opening in a new page or column. Replies, retweets and favorites are displayed with a tweet like comments and likes on a Facebook post. Before, retweets were good for your brand because they sent your message to more people, and now it’s even more beneficial because followers can see all the attention a tweet receives in one place.

Connect–Any activity about you appears on this page: replies, mentions, follows and list additions. The search field located at the top of the page is specifically to find and connect with other users. This tab is helpful to track activity about your account in one place.

Discover–This is the most enhanced section of the site, and possibly the most obvious section for Twitter to place promoted and paid content. The search field at the top is for people, keywords and hashtags. Stories, hashtags, people to follow and other search categories related to your account populate this page. This is where attendees can follow a hashtag for your event.

Me­–Your Twitter profile is much easier to access from the mobile site now since it has its own tab. It has the same functions, but in a cleaner, easier-to-find layout. Direct messages are also in this area, though it would probably make more sense to be on the Connect page. The web layout is not much different than the previous version.

New Features
Two new functions enhance Twitter’s presence on your website. Embeddable tweets allow you to post interactive tweets to your website. The live tweet has the same capability as it does on Twitter, which means viewers can reply, retweet, favorite or click on links within the post. Enhanced Twitter buttons added to your site allows users to share content and connect with others with one click. The new hashtag button auto-populates a tweet with the hashtag, ensuring followers are using the hashtag you want them to use to talk about you or join a conversation.

Enhanced profile pages are another way Twitter is taking on Facebook. The pages have only been rolled out for certain clients right now, but eventually brands will be able to customize their profiles. See examples of enlarged promoted tweets at the top of pages and custom headers at @AmericanExpress and @McDonalds.

Read other reviews and helpful hints about the new Twitter on Event Manager Blog, Fast Company and Mashable.

Don’t get too comfortable. Rumor has it that more changes are ahead, especially as the company continues to look for ways to monetize.

“I believe in the power of [social media], but none of that replaces face-to-face meetings,” keynote speaker Michael Hyatt—who has more than 100,000 Twitter followers—told CollinsonTV following his general session. “In fact, if social media doesn’t lead to face-to-face meetings, then you’re really kind of deceiving yourself. That’s where all the juice is. That’s where it really happens. That’s where all the really important decisions are made.”

Social media is a catalyst for real connection. Anyone who followed the Twitter stream witnessed collaboration taking place between attendees. CollinsonTV interviews with speakers and attendees on YouTube allow anyone to experience a piece of Marketplace beyond the in-person event. Attendees return to Facebook and Flickr months after the event to look at pictures and remember what took place.

Social media is just a tool. It doesn’t replace what I experience at Marketplace. It can’t replace finding out in the hallway about a feature film being used to inspire young people to get involved in social justice programs or hearing in an educational session about planners trying new ways to incorporate play into their meetings or learning at breakfast about specific ways a planner will change an event she held a month ago for next year.

Social media is just a tool, but it’s a valuable one. Now that Marketplace is complete, keep the innovation coming by sharing your ideas with us. Talk to us in the comment section below, on Facebook and Twitter, or by emailing testimonials and ideas to editor@collinsonmedia.com.

How do you use social media as a catalyst for your in-person event?

Here are multiple scenarios that stress the need for a social media policy suggested by hospitality attorney Barbara Dunn and meetings technology expert Jim Spellos in an educational session at Collaborate Marketplace, as well as some possible solutions.

1. The administrator of a company’s Facebook page is fired. Facebook is unique to social media in that every page must be created by an individual who has a profile on the site. Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and other sites only require a registered email address and password to create an account, but the Facebook page is permanently tied to the individual who created it even if multiple administrators are added later. While organizations can legally say it owns the page bearing its marketing and content, the person who created the page has potentially dangerous power. Companies can avoid the problem by making sure any Facebook page is created by an owner of the company. If that isn’t possible, a policy should state through which accounts all social media pages should created and password information should be public.

2. A board member tweets negative comments about the organization. As long as no proprietary information is shared, there might not be any legal action to take against the board member, but if a policy is in place the company can be prepared with a response or disciplinary action. Many employees have personal social media accounts in which free speech allows them to broadcast opinions or information, but a policy can define what employees can or cannot say about the company.

3. Exhibitors complain a geo-location rewards system unfairly benefits other sponsors. Gaming and geo-location applications that reward attendees for checking in at certain locations are growing trends at conferences and trade shows. If the game is used to draw attendees to specific booths, some sponsors might complain. Planners should outline how social media is used in relation to sponsors in an agreement with exhibitors before the event. The rewards system could benefit each exhibitor equally, or as long as it is explained beforehand, it could be an added value for sponsors.

Getting started
Social media policies can be as broad or detailed as an organization feels necessary, but they can’t violate the free speech of employees. Many corporations already have a policy in place, but meeting planners should evaluate whether it covers important meeting-specific content. If a policy is being created for the first time, select categories most relevant to the organization. Some general topics include legal issues, employee use during work hours, employees referencing the company on personal accounts, official representation of the company, handling negative comments about the company and use at events that affects outside parties.

Several major companies known for integrating social media into business practices have published policies that can be used as examples (i.e., IBM’s blogging policy and Intel’s employee social media use) and Dunn and Spellos recommend socialmediagovernance.com and socialmedia.biz as resources.

Social media guidelines should be treated like all other employee policies and distributed to stakeholders. When relevant, language should be included concerning contractors, sponsors and exhibitors, and meeting attendees.

Since the advent of Facebook, especially, attendance at 10-year high school reunions has dropped dramatically. Alumni have been able to keep track of former classmates online, in many cases stalking them out of curiosity more than an interest in staying in touch.

Mark Silva, CEO of Great Unions, one of the nation’s largest reunion planning companies, says attendance is declining across the country. So he’s changing his marketing pitch from “Find out what became of Sally” to “Unplug for a night.”

“There are a lot of people who believe that Facebook is good enough, and they don’t want to get together. Well, we try to educate them about, I guess you’d call it, real personal connections,” Silva said in an NPR report.

Reunion planners know what meeting planners everywhere realize: There’s no substitute for face-to-face, grownup connections. One cautionary note: With LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, there may be fewer opportunities to fabricate your career moves. “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion” is definitely history.

Read more.

You’ve joined LinkedIn. You’ve spent way too much time on Facebook. And at this point, you may get more information from Twitter than the nightly news. You’re clued in to the fact that social media is key to a successful event. But your social media presence can go further. Here’s what a few social tools offer for various aspects of planning.

Eventbrite: Custom online event registration pages; promotion through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg and more; charts and graphs to track attendees; and several portals to collect payments.

Sched: Personal schedules on multiple platforms for attendees that are color-coded, easy to view, and can be synced with personal calendars and smartphones.

Pathable: Group conversations according to shared interests; attendee directory with photos and bios; access to custom conference calendars; networking on mobile devices.

Twitcasting: Ability to post video captured on an iPhone to Twitter, which works well for sudden announcements or broadcasting a speaker or session attendees might have missed.

Wufoo: Custom e-mail templates with built-in HTML form builders for feedback and surveys.

Twapperkeeper: Collects and archives attendees’ Tweets.

Social Mention: Allows planners to keep track of what is being said about their organizations on social media with daily email alerts.

Proxlet: Helps control Twitter feeds by blocking apps, muting users and filtering hashtags; works on multiple clients such as TweetDeck and Twitter for iPhone as well as mobile.

Facebook Event Check-In: Ability to check in to a Facebook event on the day of and when in the vicinity of the event with the site’s next mobile app update.

For more information about engaging attendees with technology and social media check out “Rules of Engagement” in the April issue of Rejuvenate and read “All About Timing” for tips on the best time to send social media updates.

Timing is everything, especially during meetings and events. Food must be served before attendees get hungry and impatient. Breakout sessions must coordinate with speakers’ schedules. Keynotes must be scheduled according to the mood and tempo of the conference.

The timing of your social media reach is equally important. Last week, a webinar by HubSpot, a marketing company, addressed the science of social media timing. Dan Zarrella, Hubspot’s social media scientist, explained that tweeting at a certain time or sending an e-blast on a specific day makes a difference in the amount of attention it gets. Social media, he said, is like a cocktail party. When you’re at a party and everyone is talking, it can be hard to hear. But when two people step into another room to talk, they can hear one another. It’s the same with social media. The concept is called contra-competitive timing: avoiding crowds by delivering content when others aren’t so you have a greater chance of getting attention.

Below are facts and resources to help time your social media:

Twitter
- Retweets happen most later in day or week. Use tweetwhen.com to find when most of your retweets happen.
- Saturday and Sunday Tweets get the most clicks.
- Most followed Tweeters send an average of 22 messages a day­. The more you Tweet, the better, but content matters. If you’re Tweeting links from other websites, send a lot of them. But if you’re Tweeting content from your own websites, don’t go crazy; only Tweet once or twice per day.

Facebook
- More articles are posted during the week but more are shared on the weekend because the “noise” is turned down. 
- Articles published early in the morning do better than those published in the afternoon. This could vary for your organization, so monitoring your audience response is important.

Planner: Nick Stromwall, resource team director, Campus Outreach Minneapolis

Special Challenges: On the free day we planned on sending 150 students to a ski/snowboarding hill. The weather was 50 degrees and thunderstorms. We improvised by adding other free day options and creating a Movie at the Mall day, as well as converting a ballroom into a craft room for the day, where students could make journals, play music on a stage or play Nintendo Wii.

Volunteers: We created student media internships where students are trained on how to use technology to create promotional movies to help recruit students to attend the conference year after year. [On the videos] they share their experience and why they thought spending five days in Milwaukee pursuing Jesus Christ has value for a future student to consider and invest their time.

Social Media: Our attendees are all college students, so the use of Facebook, blogs and texting is critical to inform and educate students about taking part in the opportunity. This was the first year we were able to send out text alerts for last-minute changes in programming and free day options.

Advice: Plan events that you are passionate about and that have made an impact on your personal life. It’s then that you will invest yourself fully to give attendees a similar experience to what you had.

Inspiration: I love creating opportunities for students to be surrounded by the fellowship of like-minded friends who are pursuing Jesus Christ. Learning about the grace of God at a conference in college inspired me to give others this same life-changing opportunity.

See pictures of MNYC and other recent faith-based events from around the country in Face2Face in the February issue of Rejuvenate.

Most meeting and event planners spend a good deal of time on the road—it’s the nature of the job. It’s interesting to note the changes in how planners have stayed in touch with family and friends while traveling for their jobs.

Think back to the pre-cell phone days: Staying in touch often meant calling home from your hotel room—and paying exorbitant hotel long-distance charges. Or, as many experienced business travelers did, arranging a code with family to let the phone ring three times as a signal they were calling so family could call back at much lower rates.

Cell phones, of course, greatly simplified and reduced the cost of staying in touch. So did e-mail, especially once wireless Internet became widely available. Today, meeting planners and all types of business travelers are increasingly turning to social media for staying in touch—both personally and professionally—while on the road.

In a survey recently released by Sheraton Hotels and Resorts, more than 60 percent of respondents said they use social media to stay in touch with family and friends when traveling for business. What’s more, 36 percent said they prefer to log onto a social media site to share good news with family and friends rather than make a phone call or send an e-mail.

In addition to broad-based social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, niche social media sites are cropping up that allow professionals within specific industries to more easily stay in touch with each other while traveling. For example, pinezapple.com is an online community for those in the hospitality industry to share stories, announce events, promote deals and plan weekend events.

Also, the Meetings Community (MeCo) allows meeting and event professionals to network, discuss and exchange ideas about their industry. The MeCo website features real-time scrolling Tweets from members, as well as a message board accessible via the MeCo Google Group.

But when it comes to reaching family and friends as well as colleagues, mainstream social media sites remain the norm. Cheryl Heiks, a marketing consultant for Lluminari, which plans events in the healthcare industry, says she regularly uses social media while on the road to stay in touch with family and friends back home. “I started getting involved with social media when we built bewell.com, which is a type of social networking site for healthcare,” she says. “It has become a preferred way to communicate.” Heiks is a fan of updating her Facebook page from her mobile phone. “Making changes via mobile phone is the easiest and quickest way when you’re on the road.”

“I would be lost without Facebook while traveling,” adds Candice Cain, owner of the Candy Cain Travel Company and the mother of twin 3-year-olds. “I use it to keep in touch with friends, family, staff and clients while on the road, posting photos of where I am, videos of what I’m doing and reviews of the places I’ve been.”

Cain says this is especially critical when traveling internationally, where cell phone roaming and texting charges can really add up. “People today see this form of communication as normal and expect it,” she notes, adding that she also regularly updates her blog while on the road.

Cheryl Renzenbrink, a partner with Pivotal Events, an event planning company in Edmonton, Canada, also travels extensively internationally and uses Facebook and Skype to stay in touch. “I originally set up a Facebook account when my daughter went to South America for six months and told me that’s how she was going to communicate,” she says. “I just recently discovered the chat feature on Facebook, so now we use that to communicate when I’m on the road.”

Sherry Heyl, an Atlanta-based social media guru and the founder of Concept Hub, is also a big advocate. “Of course, there are the standard Twitter and Facebook updates, but the rise of location-based apps like Foursquare and Facebook places has added more dimensions, especially now that some of the location-based apps have added photo sharing,” says Heyl. “I just came across an app called Flicksquare, which will send your pictures that were loaded to your Foursquare account to your Flickr account.”

The key, says Heyl, is integration of these tools. “With the click of a button on your smartphone, you can post your status and pictures to your Facebook and Twitter accounts automatically from wherever you are.”

2011. Sounds fresh, doesn’t it? Suddenly, we have faith, once again, that a new year brings new opportunities. We go on with recommitment and excitement, pushing away the wariness and burdens of the used-up year. It’s hard to remember the start of 2010, let alone the beginning of the last decade.

In 2000, we collectively breathed a sign of relief that Y2K didn’t result in a global technological crash as predicted, but the pace of change made us gasp. The Internet was growing faster than our capacity to absorb it. As the economy picked up at the end of 2003, the Web became more than an information vehicle; it was now a means of reaching customers and attaining new revenue streams. In 2008 and 2009, the meetings and travel industry seemed to come to maturity as it weathered its own perfect storm, a combination of the economic downturn, bad press and air travel complications. The social media craze became a universal phenomenon, opening more and more channels to reach attendees.

Innovation continues to be the word of the moment. What’s ahead? More.

Here’s a brief look at what the pundits and surveys predict.

•Mobile devices will be used more and more to reach and engage audiences before, during and after meetings. Mobile apps will be customized for individual events and programs in order to communicate with attendees, especially to deliver time-sensitive information like changes in itinerary and other announcements, and to encourage audience interaction and track audience response.

•Social media tools and networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn will become an increasingly important component of any meeting plan. Trend forecasters say 2011 will bring greater use of technology to connect clients and meeting managers during the planning stages of events as well as to engage attendees year-round.

•Computer kiosks that provide meeting-goers the opportunity to Tweet during events and Twitter boards that stream live updates also will continue to grow in popularity (at least until digital tablets take over). The demand for charging stations goes along with this trend.

•Comprehensive registration tracking and reporting will become more prevalent through the use of barcode scanning and RFID, and may soon include more customized audience tracking tools.

•Green meetings are coming into full bloom with demands that go beyond LEED-certified facilities and recyclable products to include locally sourced food, water refill stations and reusable plants for centerpieces in place of cut flowers.

•Big: Hotels, casinos and convention centers are growing. Besides getting faster, the world of meetings is getting bigger, at least the arenas are. From The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas to the Palace of Versailles, slated to become a grand hotel by 2012, the venue possibilities are over the top.

•Pink. That’s the new color of 2011—more specifically Honeysuckle, according to Pantone Color Institute. Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman says, “In times of stress, we need something to lift our spirits.” The uplifting hue is described as a dynamic reddish pink. Imagine the possibilities.

We’ve got lots of ideas as well as story ideas lined up for 2011, but we want to hear yours as well. Please call, e-mail and friend us on Facebook, and let us know what you’re doing that’s new and exciting this year. You’ll also find more trends and live stories about how other planners are using them in our upcoming issues.

Happy New Year,

Christine Born

Editorial Director