“Can I tell you something you really need to know about for this story?” says Ben Martin, CAE, as soon as we say our hellos at the beginning of our phone call. “Are you familiar with the Sarah Lacy/Mark Zuckerberg fiasco?”
How could anyone forget? The incident, reported and recounted in blog posts innumerable, might carry the championship title for the all-time most disastrous conference keynote ever—at least from the backchannel point of view. The date: March 9, 2008. The place: South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) in Austin, TX. The contenders: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, journalist Sarah Lacy, and Twitter.
If you missed it, it is difficult to convey in just a few words what happened there that day. When the interview commenced onstage, in front of a large gathering of technophiles, Lacy did not seem to notice that audience members quickly became restless with her line of questioning. She noticed when, during the last few minutes of the interview, someone shouted, “Talk about something interesting!” to much applause and cheering from hundreds of attendees.
From there, the audience took over, beginning their own impromptu Q&A session at the expense of Lacy’s composure.
“Someone, like, send me a message later of why exactly it was that I sucked so bad,” she said onstage.
An audience member responded at once: “What is your email address?”
What Lacy did not know while she interviewed Zuckerberg was that an entirely different conversation was taking place on Twitter.
What Can Go Wrong?
Martin, who is the vice president of marketing and communications at the Virginia Association of REALTORS®, collaborates with Principled Innovation, LLC as its architect of participation, a role through which he helps clients to strategically maximize on social media and the Web at large. He has seen the gamut of social media usage among associations, including its various impacts on meetings and events, as well as the outcomes of different types of responses and approaches. He calls the Lacy/Zuckerberg interview “the first big, Web-meets-real-life conference brew-ha-ha that went down.”
“The [attendees] were not hearing questions that they thought Sarah Lacy should be asking,” Martin explains, “so they were, basically, just flaming her on Twitter in the course of all this. On Twitter, the whole world was seeing that Mark Zuckerberg was dodging questions and Sarah Lacy was just lobbing him softballs. There were all these great questions that other people were asking in Twitter that weren’t being asked from the stage.”
To deliver the content her audience wanted, Lacy might have done better to refer to a PDA, rather than her interview notes.
“Monitoring the Twitterverse around your event in real time lets you hear what people are saying about your event,” says David Schenberg, CEO of BusyEvent. His company works with clients to integrate Twitter, among other social media platforms and online applications, into their events. “This provides you an opportunity to respond and adjust while the show is in progress. This proactive approach will win you huge points with your attendees and other stakeholders.”
Some event organizers make other types of efforts to keep up with audience moods throughout their conferences. Martin has seen a few conferences that include daily surveys or requests for feedback, so organizers receive “almost real-time” comments that help them to resolve any issues as they arise.
“Conference organizers don’t have to wait until after the conference is over to learn what they were doing wrong,” Martin says.
“Our conference conducts a comprehensive online post-event survey, as well as a paper/pencil survey for our offline members,” says Paula Hinkel, event planner and publicity director for the Southern California Genealogical Society’s Genealogy Jamboree. “Very short, session-specific survey forms are also distributed and compiled. That gives us the granularity we need to identify problems and resolve them. Our attendees have provided excellent feedback and have made valuable suggestions that have been implemented in subsequent years.”
Kerry Lehto, president of KL Communications, Inc., knows no conference will ever please everyone.
“I’ve been tabulating evaluations for almost 15 years now, more than a quarter million for large corporate clients, and I’ve come across everything,” Lehto says. “If you run what seems like a perfect event, there’s always going to be somebody to find something wrong with it!”
The SXSW incident is a perfect example of the worst-case scenario regarding how online interaction can, potentially, spur a mob mentality that draws widespread, negative attention to a conference. Some associations have foreseen—and feared—potential attendee backlash through social media outlets for quite some time, which is why some are hesitant to open the channels of communication.
“Most associations are concerned about the negative feedback,” Martin says. “What are people going to think if we get negative feedback posted to the event blog? That negative feedback is just instantly displayed on the web.”
As some corporations have learned in recent years, a single video posted to YouTube can result in a public relations nightmare. The more scandalous the content, the faster it spreads, as in the case a few weeks ago regarding a couple of Domino’s Pizza employees who filmed and posted a video of themselves defiling food products in a restaurant kitchen. The clip garnered thousands of views in no time, and Patrick Doyle, president of Domino’s, posted on YouTube a public video response to the incident to counter its damage to the company’s image.
“As fast-acting as these channels can be for getting out the good word, it is even faster for the bad,” says Schenberg, who names Domino’s Pizza as one of his company’s clients. He points to the Domino’s YouTube incident as “a case study for how a horrible situation was handled quite well.”
Avoiding online interaction won’t make the negative comments or content go away, after all.
“The point that I always try to make to folks when I talk to them about this stuff is that people are already having those conversations,” Martin says. “They’re already griping and complaining. But because [social media] is so public, I think that does, rightfully, give a lot of meeting planners some heartburn because, suddenly, all of your foibles are subject to mass distribution.”
However, in some cases, tuning in to the Web just might be more effective than passing out the same old paper conference evaluation forms that some people might not turn back in, anyway.
“If it’s legitimate feedback—and, oftentimes, it is legitimate feedback—I think it’s better to know about it as it happens, rather than getting the survey results a week or a month later and then realizing what people didn’t like,” Martin says. “You might as well figure it out quickly so you can do something to correct it.”
To Engage Or to Ignore?
Perhaps you come across some negative comments about your conference on a blog post somewhere. Should you respond? Should you argue or explain? Should you ignore the comments altogether?
The answer depends on whom you ask. More, it depends on the particular organization and the specific type of feedback you receive.
“Engage; never ignore,” says Alec Meyer, regional account manager at Event Management Systems by Dean Evans & Associates, Inc. “They’ve already flamed you, so what do you have to lose by responding? Nothing—so long as you don’t make yourself look worse in the process.”
“We typically do not engage an individual, other than to acknowledge the complaint and thank them for bringing it to our attention,” Hinkel says. “I’ll also put a blog post together to respond to issues.”
“Engage,” says Anne Hotchkiss Janzer, a marketing content writer for high-tech companies. “You’ll show that you’re taking notice and defuse the negativity, even if you cannot address the specific complaint. And, if possible, talk about how you might be addressing that complaint in a future event. If there’s nothing specific you can do for the past problem—[for instance,] the presenter was clueless—at least talk up some upcoming presenters.”
Martin recommends judging on a case-by-case basis.
“If the comments are really nasty and negative, and unjustifiably so, people can smell that on the Internet,” he says. “They can say, ‘Oh, this is just a troll; this person’s got a stick up their butt and they’re just looking for attention.’ Sometimes, people will come to your defense even if you don’t reply or engage at all.”
However, if an individual provides constructive criticism, you might want to take that feedback to heart.
“If they do have a serious critique that’s logical and well laid out, and they don’t use any four-letter words in their critique, I think those are the kind of people that you do want to engage,” Martin says. “You can offer your point of view and explain why you did this, that, or the other.”
The goal might not always need to rely upon silencing the complainers. Where there is online commentary, there is likely to be an audience, and a public response to negative feedback can help an organization win points with readers.
“Say we’re talking about a blog post with comments,” Martin says. “Even if the person who is writing won’t agree with you, the people who are reading the comments will understand. You may be able to convince some of them to come around to your way of thinking.”
Hotchkiss Janzer agrees that the best response is a public response.
“The original person who posted the complaint may remain unmoved, but others following the conversation will see that you care about the attendee experience,” she says. “Social media tends to be forgiving, if you at least participate and show that you care about what people are saying.”
Lehto believes the decision to engage or to ignore should actually depend on the audience, rather than the individual providing the initial negative comments.
“If the numbers back you up, one thing you can do is post a response, saying, ‘I understand what you’re saying, but 73 percent of respondents were extremely satisfied with such-and-such, and we always try to do our best,’” Lehto says. “I’d respond in this way, if you believe that many people are viewing the negative comments. If not, then perhaps just blow it off, knowing that everyone has his or her opinion, and we can’t make everyone happy at once.”
What Can You Do Now?
Taking a proactive approach and identifying potential issues before they occur are methods conference organizers can use to minimize concerns regarding negative online feedback. Last year, the Virginia Association of REALTORS® held its annual meeting in Baltimore, MD, and the association staff predicted possible confusion or objections on the parts of some members.
“We knew that there was going to be an issue,” Martin says. “Why is a state association sending people out of state for their convention? We had a very reasonable rationale as for why we did that, and if folks didn’t agree with it, we could at least say, ‘Well, this is why the decision was made.’”
To head off the issue, the association posted a page to its website that clearly highlighted the location and explained the reasons for its selection. Martin suggests that conference organizers simply be open and communicative about potential problems.
“Just being aware of them and having a response ready to go out at a moment’s notice is important,” he says. “Social media ‘stuff’ really should be baked into the entire organization. Everybody should be aware of this stuff, and the consequences and the opportunities that are available through it.”
Another proactive approach is to intentionally seek out online feedback about a conference, rather than waiting for it to come to your attention. If you do not actively monitor social media, you might hear nothing, but that does not mean nothing is being said.
“I do Google searches to see what is being said about Jamboree, both before and after the event,” Hinkel says. “Basically, we avoid being surprised.”
“Any good PR firm will tell you the key to success is keeping an active ear on things,” Schenberg says. “Postmortem is no longer soon enough. Faster communications require a faster response time, and event producers are being held to a much higher standard of ROI and quality now.”
Another important point in the social media realm is to recognize that it is, for the most part, a self-feeding organism, and an effective environment for online interaction cannot be forced.
“The smart people who are organizing conventions and meetings realize that the best way for this stuff to happen is to have it kind of bubble up organically,” Martin says. “There’s a little bit of foresight that an [organization] needs to… create some sense around [social media], while, at the same time, realizing that if they try to force it too hard, then the community they want to develop might actually work against them or splinter off into their own thing. It’s kind of a fine line to walk.”
Online involvement has become a foregone conclusion for many companies and organizations. The best bet for meeting professionals is to be aware of potential issues and keep the lines of communication open, rather than trying to stem the tides. For many years, companies and organizations have been advised that they must have a web presence in order to survive. Today, a web presence is no longer left to individual choice. Even if you do not engage in social media, social media might engage you.
