Conferences such as The Social Shake-Up 2014 provide great opportunities to network and learn, but it can be hard for attendees, as well as event organizers, to gather the whole experience of them in one place.
"We were continually frustrated by the inability to easily see all the social media content from events we had attended, gathered together in one place. We had to check multiple different feeds and hashtags, or email several guests to ask them to send us their photos," says Ronny Elkayam, co-founder and CEO of Moment.me, the automatic album maker gone mobile microsite for events.
Since launching in September 2012, the Tel Aviv-based social startup has expanded to help event planners and business owners use the same aggregated social media content to engage with their target audience.
"It's all been a natural extension of the same vision, where we believe that technology shouldn't replace or take away from the live experience, but enhance it," says Elkayam, who co-founded Moment.me with fellow veterans of the Israeli startup ecosystem Eilon Tirosh and Boaz Adato. "Our solution, whether for personal or business use, enriches the real-life event for everyone. It can also be used to help brands and businesses interact more effectively with their target audience and build the kind of relationships that lead to higher conversion rates."
Through the Moment.me algorithm, the platform automatically scans major social networks and your smartphone camera roll to aggregate all of the data available associated with a given event. You can pull in posts, tweets, pictures, Vines, and Facebook uploads made by all of your clients, prospects, colleagues, and friends at a particular event. So whether it's the #SocialShakeup, a concert, a music festival, a party, or you name it, Moment.me creates a panoramic view of the experience for everyone. For event organizers, or bloggers like myself, it allows for the easy development of a mobile site housing all the digital content relating to that event.
"Our mobile microsites have been used at countless networking and meet-up events designed to connect like-minded people," Elkayam says. "The microsite, with its live, integrated social media feed, makes the perfect fit for these socially-oriented events."
At the Habit Summit 2014, Elkayam says participants were able to participate in and keep constantly up to date with the social media conversations going on around them, live at the conference. From tweets and Facebook statuses, to Instagram photos and videos of the lectures, everything that went on was immediately updated to the mobile microsite. It also included interactive social media features like polling on the best talks, competitions for the best tweet and photo of the summit, and options to share the event with friends and family who weren't attending.
Users can also RSVP to a Moment.me event; see who else is attending; sign in to get their own personalized view of the event; view a summary of the event; invite friends to the event; see a map of where it's located; look at the most popular images and videos, which are those where the heart has been clicked; and create a quick highlight reel of their favorite event photos and videos.
"All these tools and features helped the organizers of the Habit Summit up their engagement levels at the conference, as well as direct the social media conversation more effectively by giving them a 360-degree overview of all the content that was being posted about their event," says Elkayam. "The mobile site became a dynamic online place that did more than allow participants to see a copy of the speaking agenda; it provided a place where social media became the springboard for enhancing the overall experience of the summit and extending its impact moving forward."
While there are other solutions out there that help give event planners a mobile presence for their event, others allow them to use social media for more effective engagement. Then some offer their users customer outreach and marketing tools. Moment.me is the only app to offer all of these tools and solutions in one solution, and more importantly, to offer that solution at an affordable rate, which is free for basic microsite creation. There are several premium account options starting at $8 monthly for added features like greater customization, more complex analytics, longer storage, and advanced social media content moderation.
"We recently debuted a dedicated account for conferences, where for the affordable monthly fee of $40, conference organizers can enjoy a host of tailored services like advanced analytics, year-round hosting, and customizable tabs like agenda, floor plan, or speaker list," Elkayam says.
Moment.me's aims to expand its user base by partnering with major players in different verticals and industries. Its recent partnership with leading web development platform, Wix.com, is the first step in this direction. The partnership gives them access to more than 53 million new users who will be able to use the service within their existing Wix website.
"Our solution is designed to be easy to use for anyone looking to engage more effectively with consumers at any event. Our users can leverage the social media content at their disposal to increase engagement. They can implement social media competitions, like 'best selfie of the night,' 'best tweet of the conference,' or 'most shared status,' of the day, which not only reward social media influencers, but also encourage engagement."
To take the instant videos and GIFs further, users can incorporate that content into Moment.me's integrated email marketing tool to follow up with everyone that attended the event.
Check out The Social Shake-Up 2014 Moment.me event I created:
Please join me on this tool so we can get a 360-degree view of social business (iPhone and Android), besides the skyline we're seeing at W Atlanta - Midtown.