43 Interview important point ; the biggest concern we hear from the event organisers is how much content they need to produce . It is less about the volume produced , and it ’ s much more about being smart with the content you can produce . This is about reusing , recycling , repurposing that content .
“ Think about your live events : it ’ s an hour-long session , do people really want to sit and watch that hour of content in full when watching on-demand ? Some people will , but why can ’ t we give them highlights ? Can we break down that content and make it more accessible in shorter bursts ?
“ Understanding how your user consumes that content is as important as the content itself .”
Where is everyone ?
People are spread out across multiple channels , does Totem have the means to be able to help organsiers understand where their community is gathering ? “ It ’ s all about data and connecting data points ,” says Hughes . “ A CMO is interested in marketing , they read articles , they go to live events , they watch webinars : marketing content is their channel .
“ We are served content that is relevant to us in our daily lives ; it ’ s called programmatic advertising .
“ This is as much about behavioural data and how we can learn from it and put it to good use . At Totem , what we do is we organise your live and on-demand content across a single platform [ Reef ].
“ It ’ s an holistic digital engagement ecosystem , which has everything you need for events , learning and building communities in one single place . You can pick and choose the content that is right for your audience or the delivery mechanism that is right for your audience .
Alex Hughes
Sarah Lock
“ It ’ s where you can build communities and where it all hangs together to house this rich content , all year round , always on .”
Making the concept work
Sarah Lock is marketing acceleration director at Informa Connect , and it ’ s within her remit to ensure that Totem is being used effectively to enhance the community experience across her events .
“ One of my focuses is making sure that Totem works for all of our events to deliver our in-person and hybrid experiences .”
It ’ s a wide-ranging portfolio , with client sectors including , Finance , Biotech & Pharma and other specialist markets including Food & Hospitality , Marketing and Pop Culture .
“ We span many portfolios so there ’ s obviously subject matter goals , but across Informa Connect , people want to engage in the content , they want to meet others . Then they want to do business at our events ,” she says .
Lock is of the opinion that if you have equal needs between two segments , then you will be off to a good start , but how do you measure the success of a community ?
“ Initially it ’ s about numbers , and then measuring the growth over a period ,” she says . “ You also need to measure how often people are logging in and how often they ’ re coming back as it grows , it ’ s important to be smart with the behavioural data . We look at what content people are consuming and establish the value that they place on that piece , so that you can then start creating a space that ’ s valuable for those audiences and cutting out what ’ s not .”
How , then , has Informa Connect leveraged the power of Totem to enhance their communities ? “ When we ’ re launching new concepts and testing new things in the market , Totem provide the product development support to enable us to do that at a pace . We capitalise on their extensive experience in the industry as well ,” says Lock .
“ So hopefully , by putting more brains together , we ’ re going to create better experiences for the industry . The community benefits from our product marketing and event industry experience , and we , hopefully , help enhance Totem ’ s technology even further .”
Community , then , isn ’ t just an en vogue word for the times . An event in isolation of itself will only stretch so far . It was once an outlandish concept , but today , market-driven community engagement is the new normal . CN www . conference-news . co . uk