The Social Media Invasion = Unengaged Audience

Someone likened adults Tweeting during a conference to children sitting distractedly in a classroom. As the teacher conveys her pearls of wisdom in monotonous tones, more attention from the listeners is spent on scribbling secret notes and paper-planing them to friends on the other side of the room.

The only difference is that this type of communication - Tweeting - is now acceptable, and if you aren't doing it, you worry you're the odd one out. A classic thought might be, "Am I a nobody if I don't have 500 Twitter followers?" The answer that most believe is, well, yes.

As we grow steadily more addicted to satisfying our online communities, 'checking in', 'liking', 'updating', 'Tweeting' and 're-Tweeting' are arguably getting in the way of real-life, face-to-face communication, and more importantly its effectiveness to an audience. How truly engaged are we when half the time we're eyes down to the screen, instead of eyes up to what's in front of us? I've been particularly amazed to find colleagues Tweeting to their followers during the same conference, in the same room, without having a clue who they are!

Instead of an eager audience, eyes up to the podium like in the days before this social media invasion, all we're seeing now is extra large thumbs tapping in statuses like "@tammyp When did they say the tea break is? Boooooorrring!", or "@mike_r Is it just me, or is that dress far too short for a speaker like her? Put the legs away! LOL".

Conclusion? If you want to be truly engaged with what's being said, switch those phones off, or if you really want a conference that keeps the audience off their phones, speak to our Corporate department. They'll show you a thing or two about Engagement!