How to turn your event into a social media scoop
Posted on 17. Feb, 2012 by Jonathan Cherry in Technology
Many brands want to capitalise on social media platforms these days, but the real question is how?
How do you convince the captive audience, that you have invited to your event, to share their experience with their networks and generate loads of great free word-of-mouth reach for your business?
As a solution to this wasted opportunity – we found this analysis by Timo Arnell, a designer and researcher working with interactive products, media and emerging technologies, rather interesting.
He describes the RFID photo booth that has been used at PICNIC during the past years as a good example of a physical object that stimulates social interaction. In short, you walk into the booth (also with other people), you touch an icon, it takes a photograph and it tags you and your friends on the event’s social network.
The Cherryflava RFID Photobooth recently used at the Dimension Data Sales Conference in Johannesburg
Timo is particularly interested in the “between spaces” in conferences, like those that happen in between sessions when you meet other people. In order to further stimulate social interaction amongst the attendees, he suggests you find activities that don’t need full attention: “not full-on immersive games but stuff that you can do casually”. Using the technology (or the gadget that conveys it) shouldn’t be the main goal but a means to generate a specific behavior. It doesn’t have to interrupt but build on top of (a behavior).
“I think the real incentive for doing digital interaction is doing something more than business cards. It’s doing something about media, entertainment, something that’s engaging, [...] different and playful, not necessarily about the utility of exchanging information between people”.
Having spent the last year perfecting our own skills and infrastructure that combines RFID-technology with Facebook for use at events, we couldn’t agree more with Mr Arnell.
More: Cherryflava RFID event: Video Case study
Previously: The re-engineering of a conference – Cherryflava
Read: How to stimulate social interaction with RFID and NFC technology – link
