Why Today’s Event Attendees need Online Network Building, not Online 'Networking’…

Event experimentation has never been greater.

Attendee expectations have never been higher.

And for the organizers of all MICE events, the experience design and investment options have never been more varied or, let’s be completely honest, confusing.

Fortunately for organizers, in amongst the frenzied evolution of the entire sector two trends are gathering momentum:

1) in-person event experiences are leaning increasingly towards networking and meeting people, whilst...

2) online event experiences are thriving when it comes to content sharing to the maximum possible number of attendees in an efficient and sustainable way.

There’s a nagging problem though: Nobody wants online attendees to feel like they haven’t been given the chance to connect with each other. The event sector may be evolving, but it’s still evolving around us humans, and we thrive on connections.

Just look at the explosion in social media usage in the business world in the last 18months - we may have been physically locked down, but we were making connections like never before.

According to Hootsuite - in 2020 alone LinkedIn saw 55% increase in conversations amongst connections, 60% increase in content creation and a staggering 437% increase in LinkedIn live streams.

And this is why online network building is more important than online ‘networking’ - we are already doing it, we just need to provide more options for it.

As LinkedIn is now business as usual, why not leverage this to enable your online attendees to increase their online network, live during your event, whilst also enjoying your world-class content? Allowing attendees to connect with each other on LinkedIn, via your event, is the ideal solutions as they are familiar with LinkedIn, comfortable with it, and already recognize as a tangible business networking building activity.

This gives attendees the choice to network on their own terms, in their own time.

That’s why I’m convinced that Glisser’s new Attendee-2-Attendee Connectivity feature finally gives online attendees the much needed chance to connect with one another in a way that suits them.

Attendees on Glisser powered events can simply make their LinkedIn profile visible to their fellow attendees (at their discretion), the opportunity to build their online network is instantly available.

This not only helps your attendees to grow their online network, but the legacy of your event will live on via LinkedIn as those attendees continue to see one another’s news feeds, have the ability to connect with each other directly and indefinitely. This will always be associated with your event, your brand and your event experience.

A common question clients are already asking us is ‘how do I ensure like minded attendees connect with each other?’ and we still advise using our native video conference tool to run topic based round tables as the best way to do this. Those round tables just got stronger though as those like minded people can then share their LI profiles with one another at the touch of a button, to continue the conversations after the roundtable, and indeed after the event, at a time that suits them.

Online attendees need great content and great choices. The leaders of the event pack will enable just this with engaging content delivery and high class attendee-2-attendee network building options.

Book a Glisser platform walkthrough to learn more about our award winning meetings and events platform and all of its engagement features.