Meeting Planner Careers

When corporations dedicate precious financial resources to meeting planning and events, they want to make certain that they get a good return on their investment. For this reason, it is vitally important that meeting planners work diligently to ensure that the greatest number of participants as possible attend the scheduled meeting or event. There are several ways in which meeting planners can promote the event and encourage participation. Personal contact is always important; therefore, meeting planners can make reminder calls to participants once invitations to the event have been sent. Word-of-mouth recommendations can have quite an impact on participation.

Not only is personal contact an excellent way to reach potential event participants, but social media sites and other technology may also be utilized by a meeting planner. Many individuals have accounts with social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Meeting planners should take advantage of these social media sites by using them to promote the upcoming meeting or event. Additionally, meeting planners can send email reminders to participants or they may even promote the event on their blog. Furthermore, posting information about the event on the corporation's website or a custom website is also a great way to remind participants of the upcoming event and encourage participation.

“Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.” – Zig Ziglar

Things are different for meeting planners in 2009 than 2007 or even 2008.  Attendance is down, there are fewer events to handle, and that’s just work. No doubt, everyone’s personal lives have had a few setbacks or downright tragedies as well.

Welcome to life.  Accentuating the positive side of a situation simply means focusing on what you can do now instead of mourning what you could have done a year or two ago.

Clients may come armed with negative thoughts and anxiety levels through the roof. You can feed into that or offer positive solutions to meeting planning. Meeting planners have always had challenges to overcome; the speaker didn’t show, the audio visual system went haywire, it rained every day of the event and no one was able to use the gorgeous golf course close to the convention center. It wasn’t the end of the world then and it isn’t now.

Tough times have valuable lessons to teach. Meeting planners are more creative, inventive, and hard working than ever before. Be proud of every successful meeting you host and give yourself permission to learn from mistakes. You have probably discovered suppliers and host sites that you never heard of before the recession kicked in. You stayed the course and you’re better for it.

Regardless of the career path you choose as a meeting planner, one thing is certain: the Internet can be your best friend when it comes to marketing. More specifically, social media can often be the tipping point from a publicized meeting to a well-publicized event. Here is how you can make social media work for you.

Using Your Own Page

If you do not have a professional social media page already, you need to create one–yesterday! Your friends lists will become your contact list for bulletins about upcoming events. Let’s say you are scheduling a convention for administrative professionals, and almost all your friends have such employees. Once you send out a bulletin about the event, you may get some signing up from your list. You will help boost your attendance from one or two notices sent globally–and all for free. Read more…