While Hybrid Events Are the Clear Destination, Doing Them Well Will Take More Thought

by COVID 19Media

“What makes for a great hybrid event is really finding a kind of the core idea of the multi-screen experience.”
—John Capano, SVP of Impact XM

If pivot was the events word for 2020, then hybrid will hopefully be the word for 2021. An overwhelming 78% of those surveyed by Pathable plan to host events with both in-person and virtual components, if in-person gatherings are allowed. What’s more, just 17% of those surveyed planned to host in-person-only events when that’s permitted. But staging a good hybrid event will take some creativity and thought.

I listened to a good podcast from EventBuzz this week between Capano and host Savannah McIntosh of PurplePass. (I love that they include the transcript!) Of course, the tendency of late has been to say that we’ll all be doing hybrid events soon, when in-person events are allowed to take place again.

But Capano contends that hybrid cannot simply mean having your regular in-person conference, and then live-videoing it for folks who can’t attend. A lot of thought has to go into what works for an event that is designed both for in-person and on-screen attendees.

Here are some thoughts from Capano and others who are thinking about the return of in-person events:

Augment the live aspect. “It’s really how do you build an event that’s engaging across all areas, and really leveraging technology in such a way to augment the live aspect,” Capano said. “And so when we talk to our clients a lot, they talk a lot about virtual reality, we actually talked a lot about augmented reality because this idea of hybrid really is augmented reality. It’s let’s take a live event and let’s lay on a digital layer in an augmented way and have everyone have a connected engaging experience.”

Virtual can boost in-person. “It used to be almost everybody you talked to felt like, ‘Well, I don’t want to do a strong virtual event because it’ll cannibalize my [audience],’” said Capano. “And people have now realized that having a great virtual part of your live event is the best way to increase your attendees at your next [in-person] event. [See FOMO.] It becomes the kind of the marketing engine that scalability is the marketing that drives your future attendees.” Adds Roger Dow, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association: “One half will see the event virtually. They will see how safe it is and want to come in-person next year.”

Virtual is still about knowing your audience. “What’s the purpose of your meeting and what are you trying to achieve?” Capano asked. “Then design the technology to fit that. Once that’s done, just ideate the heck and brainstorm the heck for ways to get people more engaged, like shorter content, snackable content, ways for them to interact, and ways for them to not only interact with, say, the speakers or the acts but also other people at the event. For example, you could draw inspiration from siti non AAMS platforms, where user engagement is heightened through innovative features and competitive elements. Adding in gamification can make it fun, interesting, and a little bit competitive.”

Pack a surprise. “Add in some ‘Easter eggs,’ because that’s something again, that we try to do [to keep virtual people engaged],” Capano said. “What are the cute, little surprise, delight moments, those things are all very possible in the virtual world, you just have to put thought against them, because they’re a little different than they would be like exactly what you might do in a live setting.”

Here are a few ideas from an article in Trade Show News Network this week:

Decisions will need to be made quickly. Virtual events pioneer Pathable predicts that 38% of decision-makers will choose between hybrid, virtual or in-person for their events within the first quarter of the year. Furthermore, about 40% of planners say they will settle on a platform to host their events by March.

Virtual must stay in the conversation. “INVNT Co-founder and CEO Kristina McCoobery is optimistic that brands will return to in-person events, albeit smaller than past levels. But of note is that 2020 opened the door to reaching larger numbers of attendees through virtual events—a fact that won’t be lost on savvy groups. ‘Virtual attendees mustn’t be treated as an afterthought, and their experiences need to be carefully curated in the same way they are for an in-person audience,’ she said.”

Look for more customization. “How do you get attendees to engage more at events? Start by adjusting your event rather than expecting your guests to change their behavior organically, said David Peckinpaugh, president of Maritz Global Events. ‘By better understanding our event guests, we can design more personalized experiences for their event journey,’ he said. ‘Most importantly, we need to let design dictate event structure and content rather than simply cutting and pasting from previous live event agendas.’”

Get creative with offerings and pricing. McCoobery believes that “we’ll start to see more and more monetized interactive competitions followed by exclusive content offerings to unlock, immersive activities that allow audience members to create their own avatars and explore a space or live gig with others, and tiered payment plans, including VIP packages.” That is a mouthful!

Social network scheme, which contains flat people icons.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at SIIA

by PolicyPress Release

Alone we are smart, but together we are genius.

SIIA members are united by a shared belief that diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) are critical core values for society and our individual organizations. We believe achieving greater advancement in DEI is not only the morally correct course of action, but also research proves diverse organizations provide better business results. Embracing a diversity of perspectives fuels innovation while connecting us closer to our customers and the communities we serve.

For too long, underlying inequalities, racial biases, and discrimination have plagued the United States and communities around the world, denying too many the ability to contribute to and reap the benefits of the innovation economy. Removing these barriers to elevate opportunities for all individuals to participate will lead to the creation of new businesses and foster economic growth.

As business leaders, we recognize our responsibility to contribute to the betterment of society not only through the information, products, and services we provide but also as good citizens. We also recognize that while DEI is rooted in the need to address historic social inequities, we strive to create workplaces that reflect the communities in which we work, live, and serve our customers and where everyone feels empowered to bring their full, authentic selves to work. This means promoting a workplace culture that welcomes a diversity of ethnicity, gender, identity, nation of origin, and thought.

SIIA is committed to work with our members and within our organization to improve DEI performance for the benefit of our employees, the industry segments we represent, our nation and our world. Our efforts include:

  • Organizational Policy. Ensure that we are an organization making progressive change toward diversity, equity, and inclusion through our hiring practices, culture, operations, and offerings.
  • Member Experience. Assist our members in improving DEI outcomes through our content and knowledge offerings as well as by our example as a membership organization.
  • Promoting diversity in our internal staffing, among our volunteer leadership, our speakers, and presenters, as well as our vendors and partners.

This includes but is not specifically limited to:

  • Ensure the representation of diverse speakers at all SIIA events.
  • Ensure diverse representation across SIIA boards, committees, councils, and working groups.
  • Strengthen leadership and staff accountability and capabilities for inclusion and diversity.
  • Enable equality of opportunity across our organization through fairness and transparency.
  • Promote openness and tackle microaggressions.
  • Foster belonging through support for multivariate diversity.

Promoting DEI is not just about words. It is about action. SIIA will seek to advance our diversity goals in 2021 by:

  • Compiling data to identify metrics. We cannot know how to address inequities until we know what they are. We will capture data on demographics within the SIIA workforce and among speakers across our events to help us understand the diversity of our employees and speaker rosters and identify any areas of concern or
  • Setting a specific metric by which to measure speaker diversity at our events. Once we collect data to establish a baseline, we will set a goal to measure our success in improving outcomes.
  • Conduct a membership survey to help identify their needs as related to DEI and lead to the development of programming, and/or content to help
  • Leverage our content channels to help educate and share solutions. Integrate DEI topics across SIIA content channels, including events, and our digital and print publications. Seek to include one DEI-related story per week/month for newsletters and per issue for Signature magazine, one of our flagship publications.
  • Develop an award to recognize contributions to DEI by SIIA members. Award will be integrated into existing award
  • Review our RFP and contracting processes to ensure we are providing partnership and vendor opportunities for minority-owned and operated businesses and organizations.
  • Revitalize SIIA DEI Staff Committee. Task the committee with conducting an equity audit of our organization and develop specific metrics including questions to examine and hold us accountable in:
    • Organizational success in meeting stated
    • Our recruitment and hiring practices.
    • Ensuring diverse representation across our management and volunteer
    • Provide regular updates and reports to SIIA leadership and help support reports to volunteer
Woman connecting with her computer at home and following online courses, distance learning concept

Get Dressed, Adjust Routines to Your Vibes and Stay Connected, CEOs Advise

by COVID 19Media
Woman connecting with her computer at home and following online courses, distance learning concept

During an October 2019 SIPA webinar on managing remote workers, Heather Farley, COO of Access Intelligence, said that the most relevant stat was that 90% of remote workers said they’re more productive. “We hear this a lot at AI,” she said. At that time, many of us might have raised our eyebrows. Now, we’re all (tired) believers. But is it sustainable?

“Many also advocate for experimenting with small adjustments to your routines to hit your most productive period in the day,” Diana Shi wrote in a Fast Company article titled 9 CEOs Share Their Best Tips for Successful Remote Work

That sentence struck a chord for me. At around 7 am this morning, I read work emails written around 10 pm last night. And I’m sure that colleagues look at my 7:05 am emails the same way I look at their late-night emails—when I’m either asleep or on the verge—and we make similar exclamations. We all have different times and vibes to get our best work done, and working remotely encourages that.

Looking back now, it was prescient of SIPA to conduct that October 2019 webinar with Farley and Dan Fink, managing director of Money-Media. They gave an excellent blueprint of what to do and not do managing remote workers. Let’s mix some of their advice with some from the CEOs that Shi featured in her article for an updated guide.

Invest in relationships. “Find creative ways to still informally connect with your teams, to build and strengthen relationships,’ said Niren Chaudhary, CEO of Panera Bread. He also advises to share praise. “Remember to recognize and show appreciation of your team.”

Engaging in meetings is very important. In October 2019, Fink was concerned that remote workers would receive audio and video feeds from conference room meetings. “We’ve installed some large screens in conference rooms. There’s a marked difference in how that person participates. And how the people feel; it feels like that person was in the meeting room. It really does make a significant difference.” Today, engagement in meetings remains important. I’ve read that we lose a lot by multitasking during meetings. A recent study found that “those who focused on nonverbal communication cues from their colleagues or said they tried harder to listen attentively were less likely to see any change in the quality of their work relationships.”

Make time for one-on-one voice calls, without video. “There’s a lot of video fatigue, so be conscious whether all parties want to use it,” says Anne Chow, CEO of AT&T Business. “With family, do take advantage of all the benefits of video, especially with those whom you haven’t seen for a while. If they don’t know how to, get them set up.”

Ask for feedback. I think this one still applies. “Is this working for you?” Farley asked. “What are the pain points? Are you lonely? Do you feel disenfranchised? Is the work getting done? Relationships work because they’re built on trust. We talk about it on a regular basis, to have regular touch-in points is critical. Things don’t just happen. Clear the decks and course correct to get those situations working.” She also said to “over-communicate.” Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera, agreed and said that’s also incumbent on the manager. “Communicate. Schedule time for more all-hands, team stand-ups, one-on-ones, and skip-levels.”

Check on their technology. Pre-pandemic, 77% of remote workers were between ages 25-44. But now it’s everyone. Money-Media was quick to order “kits for a number of staff who were having difficulty being efficient in their home work space; things like a mouse, keyboard, monitor, office chair, etc.,” Fink said. “Most of these items are pretty inexpensive on amazon.com but go a long way to helping staff be productive and letting people know how much we appreciate their hard work during this crisis.”

Pretend you’re going to the office. “In this virtual world, maintaining some of the habits that helped me think and feel my best when I was going into the office has been really important to me,” said Joel Flory, CEO of VSCO, such as getting up early to exercise. Any guess what Jennifer Hyman, CEO of Rent the Runway—a subscription fashion service—recommends doing? Get dressed nice every day, of course. “Getting ready in the morning helps signal my body and brain that productivity is my priority.” I’ve read that some people even ride around for a half hour and then come home to give the commuting feel. I’ve kept my Friday tradition of driving to Heidelberg Bakery in the morning.

‘You Can Plan for the Unplanned’; Processes and Audience Outreach Give Industry Dive a Content Blueprint to Follow

by COVID 19Media

 

Back in late October, we asked readers if they had finished their 2021 editorial calendar. While 67% responded, “Yes, though we have left some room for flexibility,” 33% checked, “No, things are just too fluid.”

“Having an editorial calendar is well and good until a pandemic hits,” said Robin Re in a webinar this week titled Why You Need to Operate Like a Newsroom in 2021. She is the VP of marketing for Industry Dive, a B2B publisher that in this time of shrinking editorial staffs in many places, has been consistently adding to its reporting staff. They now have more than 80 reporters working on 23 newsletters in 20 verticals.

While the webinar was geared to marketers—the idea being that the way the Industry Dive newsroom gets to know its audience is a worthy blueprint for marketing—it also gave us an inside look at a growing and successful publisher and the insights of its editor-in-chief, Davide Savenije. The five keys that Re and fellow presenter Lieu Pham, Industry Dive’s VP global head of strategy, offered came straight from Savenije as did a few mantras along the way.

When it comes to editorial calendars and other publishing issues that can be put in flux by outside conditions, Re emphasized the need for processes. “What’s your process for dealing with unexpected things in real time?” she asked. “What format can we use to get information out and then update? Pushes? Articles? Interviews? Podcasts? What are the next developments that can then spawn from this? People want to consume quick insight and analysis. By coming out quickly, we give ourselves time to develop the deep-dive story.”

Pham added that in today’s market, brands need a plan for all types of events, kind of a marketing version of a SWAT team. Know how production will be accelerated and where you can take shortcuts to get content out fast. Ensure everyone understands their roles. “You can plan for the unplanned,” she said.

“When we talk about having a newsroom mindset, it’s not just about serving our audience,” said Pham. “It’s about having a plan in place for keeping your audience in the know and helping them plan as much as possible for the future. In other words, it’s about being ready for anything. The world turns in ways that no one can predict. Know who you are, who you serve, and plan for everything: the known, anticipated and unknown.”

While Industry Dive has grown, Pham was quick to point out when asked that smaller editorial departments actually have distinct advantages. “You can be more nimble, act like a startup,” she said. “You can really experiment and refine your approach. Just set up really solid processes than can scale… You may not be able to compete on breaking news, but you can provide more thoughtful follow-up and analysis.”

Having processes in place and being ready to pivot are part of number 3 for Industry Dive: Stay Agile. Let’s go through the other four:

Know your audience.

“We have an entire team dedicated to audience,” Re said. “Who is our target reader? What’s keeping them up at night? [Questions like these] allow our reporters to jump on the headlines and events that our readers actually care about. The audience doesn’t stay static, and neither do our efforts to understand them.”

She said that midway through 2020, they surveyed their readers and found that a quarter believed that their job had significantly changed during the pandemic. “That meant our reporters needed to pivot to stories of transition, increased responsibility, workplace alternatives and continuity solutions,” Re said.

Pham recommended these activities for your publications department: Customer interviews – up to five customers per audience segment. Stakeholder interviews, especially those who are customer facing. Who at your association deals directly with your audience?) Social listening. Don’t go crazy with this, Pham advised. Focus on the key threads to help develop the story angle. Keyword research. “That’s critical to establish authority or own a key conversation.” Analytics. What topics are resonating? Alerts. Competitor mentions, industry trends.

This as an ongoing process, Pham said. “So stay attentive, monitor and listen to make sure you’re investing in the right topics.”

Choose your coverage, keeping your goals, brand promise and audience in mind.

“Focus on what will impact [your audience’s] lives today, tomorrow and 10 years from now,” Re said. ”A story should also correlate back to a trend that says something larger about the target reader’s profession. Our reporters take a backroads view of what will change in the next 10 years and then tell the day-to-day stories that help readers get there.”

She explained that choosing what not to cover can be just as crucial as selecting topics. Every story idea at Industry Dive must undergo a rigorous evaluation, focusing on the value it provides for the audience. She quoted Savenije, saying, “You can’t be an expert on everything, so be an expert on the most important things.”

This mindset aligns with approaches taken by independent SEO consultants, who prioritize high-impact areas rather than spreading resources too thin. Pham emphasized the importance of determining which topics establish expertise and authority, ensuring they align with your business’s core strengths. She added, “Check out the competition; assess what they’re excelling at or missing. Remember, you’re competing with all content providers, not just your traditional competitors.”

“Be really intentional,” Pham advised, whether that’s “meeting a gap in the market or simply creating high-quality journalistic content. In a world where content is highly commoditized, investing in quality could be all you need to take the lead.

Prioritize substance over clickbait.

“Readers trust us to take a deeper analysis beyond any other business publications,” Re said. “So we need to provide depth.” They discovered that 82% of their audience feel that quality of analysis is something they look for in a news source. So their headlines are active, informative, succinct and engaging, but don’t oversell. “Your teaser text should drive the headline,” she said. “Also try to be economical with words. And compel the reader to take action.” Create a curiosity gap that leaves the reader wondering.

Pham wants to see a diverse range of experts, inside and outside of your organization, leveraged, and for you not to make format assumptions. Narrow your coverage, she advised and double down on the why’s—thought leadership, big ideas—and hows—resources, templates, guidance and how-tos.

Listen. Measure. Learn.

“We want to build a relationship [with the audience] based on trust and credibility,” Re said. So page views are nice but they’re too soft a measurement tool. They prefer time spent on page, engagement rate and shares. “We use content that engages our target reader as fuel for our next story. Why waste time on a topic that the audience has shown little interest in in the past?

“We’ve built out dashboards that help show our newsroom the engagement behavior of our most valued targeted readers. Which stories are they reading? Which ones are they sharing? That tells where we go next?”

“It’s really good practice to adopt an evolutionary approach to content,” said Pham. “We constantly monitor performance and… the topics not working, and double down on the topics that are performing well. It’s a form of content Darwinism; it’s literally survival of the content fittest.”

The webinar can be watched in full here. There is also an accompanying free report titled 2020 Audience Insights for B2B Marketing in the Year of Disruption that you can read here.

‘Is It Evergreen?’ Our First ‘Industry Question of the Week’ Concerns Updating Popular Content for SEO

by Media

We are so fortunate to have among our membership and audience various experts on multiple subjects who are very willing to share their knowledge. So we will take advantage of this huge asset in a new feature called Industry Question of the Week. If you have a question that you would like me to offer to the experts, please email me at rlevine@siia.net.

Here’s our first question:

We are having a debate at our company about updating old online content for SEO and engagement purposes. We are being told by an SEO and engagement expert (whose background is in content marketing, not journalism) that we should go back to older articles that are still performing well in SEO, or that are relevant to a keyword we want to target as a subject for improving search results, and update them, including changing the date. If we did change the date, we would have to make sure the information in the article is up to date, which would mean trying to get in contact with old sources. At that point it would probably take less time to write a new article on the same topic.

And here are answers from three experts:

Kim Mateus – chief strategy officer, Mequoda

“In our view, there are two kinds of journalism online—one approach that keeps the original date forever in order to maintain that proper historical record, and another approach that is appropriate for evergreen content that we publish through our portals (aka the free sections of our site that we use for audience development). We believe both of these content types have a place in a publisher’s portal. For evergreen content, we believe the best service you can provide your readers is to keep the content updated, and simply keep a note on the bottom of the post stating the original post month and year, i.e ‘This post was originally published in January of 2008 and is updated regularly.’

“So for this particular example, they should determine if this content is evergreen and needs to be updated and maintained like you would a reference book, or if it is more like a newspaper article that you want to keep on record and maintain its chronology forever. In our view, the example could be considered an evergreen piece and could be updated with a new publish date, and reference that the quote was originally acquired in 2008, while also adding in that sentence at the bottom of the article that says, ‘This post was published in January of 2008 and is updated regularly.’ The fact that the company name has changed and that [a person quoted] is now deceased could be acknowledged in a slight rewrite of the post’s lede and anywhere else in the post where an updated reference is needed.

“Google is clearly giving publishers an incentive to keep evergreen content updated by sending publishers traffic to these evergreen posts, and this is a strategy we’ve seen enormous success with across our entire client base for many years.”

 

Matt Bailey – author, digital marketing expert and founder of SiteLogic and the Endless Coffee Cup podcast

“Yes, I’ve heard this one before. It’s made the rounds a few times, and it is just as useless as other ‘SEO tricks.’ Update a few words here or there for SEO (page title, headline), but don’t lie to your readers or to Google. Changing the date is cheating, IMO.

“It’s a terrible theory that made its way into mainstream SEO articles. I’ve seen some people remove all dates from their websites, but it doesn’t change anything. Plus, it makes readers upset when they can’t trace a date to the information! When Google spiders a page, it downloads the meta data (date pub, language), the content of the page, URL, etc. Any changes are matched against the original to update Google’s index. Changing the date doesn’t change the history

 

David Longobardi, chief content officer, CyberRisk Alliance

“I agree it’s wrong to simply change dates on old content. But you are on the right track about updating certain assets. The concept is known as managing ‘living URLs,’ and it can be a great SEO support. The idea is to review all of your high-ranking content and identify all of your ‘annuals’ and ‘evergreens.’ Annuals include stuff like rankings, and listings, year-end outlook features and so on. Evergreens (in this context) would be other content you might justifiably elevate to annual or quarterly status. Be generous in what you choose to bring under these umbrellas; think of it as part of your content strategy rather than SEO system-gaming.

“In looking at annuals, I’ve found that one year’s iteration of, say, a Top 40 Under 40 feature, always seems to outperform others in SEO and often it’s one of the older, outdated iterations!. Going forward, rather than spread that content across multiple URLs, there’s a way to structure it all under one, so that the full authority remains concentrated and searchers have the optimal experience. Meanwhile, in thinking about evergreens, you may find service features that have real shelf life and might legitimately be updated on some regular cadence. For example, if you hit an SEO home run with an explainer or how-to piece in 2018, decide whether it would add audience value to update it annually.”

We thank our three experts. Again, if you have a question, please send to rlevine@siia.net.