We've moved! - by Matt Hamnett

Over the past few months we've been working hard on a new website which has now gone live.

We've really enjoyed blogging and think it's a really important way to help you learn more about the great team we have here at MEETinLEEDS.  That's why we've decided to integrate our blog into our website, rather than keep them separate.

So from now on all our blog posts will feature on  the new website.

You can visit the new website and read the latest blog about the website changes at www.meetinleeds.co.uk/responding-to-change

Growing Our Online Presence (or how to be in more than one place at the same time) - by Matt Hamnett

When I first joined the conferencing team at the University of Leeds in 2009 there were two social platforms that we knew we had to be a part of if we wanted to communicate with our customers online. 

The social space has been shaken up over the past few years creating a much broader market share and a new approach to sharing content online.  For a long time marketing via social media began and ended with Twitter and Facebook but as more and more social platforms have gained ground, and members, it’s become impossible to ignore the places where our customers are spending their time online.

Facebook and Twitter are now the veterans of the social media world as an endlessly growing number of social networks provide new spaces for people to hang out, pin photos, create videos, share experiences and make buying decisions.

Pinterest was launched just 3 years ago but already has over 70 million users and gets over 2.5 billion page views each month.  It’s also been reported that it drives more traffic to websites than Twitter and LinkedIn combined – and who doesn't want their customers to end up on their website?!  These figures alone are enough for us to realise that it’s a social space that we’d like to be part of but what really drew our attention to the network was that it seemed an ideal place to showcase the breadth of facilities that we can offer.  Our Pinterest board is still very much in its infancy but it’s a fun place to be and we see a lot of potential in it.

Google is going to incredible lengths to make sure that its social network, Google+, is a success.  Recently they've replaced YouTube’s comments with G+ comments, given G+ more impact for local businesses and a G+ presence will even mean a higher placement in Google search results. So far all of this seems to be working - a study last year showed that G+ has over 343 million monthly users and 34% of all social logins; that surpasses both LinkedIn and Twitter.

We started using Google+ a while ago and love its clean interface and easy to use experience.  The fact that it helps people find our facilities online too is, of course, a great bonus!  Add YouTube and the importance of Google Maps to online search and Google are certainly doing plenty to keep us busy.

It’s not just social media that’s changed at such a pace either.  Email marketing is still as important as ever, websites are crucial hubs that should collate all of your online activity, responsive websites are expected by anybody visiting your site on a mobile device and 2014 is apparently the year that content marketing will fully mature.

Thankfully, Meet in Leeds have always enjoyed being ahead of the game and so we’re growing our team to make the most of what’s to come.  We look forward to seeing you on the next big thing!

Top Conference Sales Team - by Richard Handscombe

Teamwork is defined as “the combined action of a group of people, especially when effective and efficient” (Oxford Dictionary).

In my earlier years in business I worked in several teams that would struggle hard to justify that definition.  In fact, I’d go so far as suggesting that effective and efficient are words that struggled to exist until at least the 1990's!  But today's world demands levels of effectiveness and efficiency far ahead of where we were in the last century.

Thankfully since then I have worked in, and led, some fantastic sales teams, none more so than my current sales and marketing team here at MEETinLEEDS, to whom I’d like to introduce you.

In the picture (l to r) are:

• Lisa (Woody) Wood, Conferences Sales Exec extraordinaire, dressed today in black but with an incredibly colourful personality that fills the office with fun.
• Matt (Dot Com) Hamnett, who speaks fluent cyberspeak and operates silently and black magically to bring us to prominence in the online world
• Natalie (Ginger) Ruecroft, Conference Sales Executive, whose natural flair for comedy keep us enthralled as she determinedly closes business.

Missing from the picture is our Sales Manager, Harriet (“H”) Boatwright, currently on maternity leave, and whose vast knowledge and skill we look forward to regaining toward the end of the year.

Finally, also missing from the picture is Ryan (Ry-Ry) Johnson, a practitioner of the Barnsley accent, and promoter of good coffee, who parachuted into our team to assist in Harriet’s absence.

The skills and personalities embodied in the above team come together in a really great way.  In sales, first impressions are everything and we're totally confident on this score.  So, when looking for your next venue, why not give us a call and experience the “Leeds Hug”?

MEETinLEEDS goes Mobile- by Matt Hamnett

Over the past couple of months we've been working on a mobile version of our website.

It’s been something that we’ve wanted to do for quite some time – we know that we get a lot of delegates on campus who use their mobile phones to access our website to find out more information about the venue that they’re visiting.  We’ve also seen over the past year or so that more and more people are viewing websites on their mobile phones, and our web statistics are backing this up.

So with this in mind we knew we wanted to make visiting our site as easy as possible no matter what device our customers were using.

I started by doing some research into the mobile future of the web and found some interesting statistics.  There are 5.3 billion mobile users globally, that’s 77% of the world’s population, and the mobile web is predicted to overtake desktop figures by 2013/14.  Clearly we needed to be aware of how our customers saw us on-line.

Of course www.meetinleeds.co.uk was, and is, accessible via any mobile phone that had an internet browser, but were our customers getting the same sharp experience that we’d expect them to have if they were viewing the site on a desktop computer?  We’ve always been confident that the site looks good and is easy to use but we noticed that if we navigated our way through the site on our mobile then the pictures weren’t so large and impressive and the links were harder to spot, and access.

At this point we knew we wanted to make something that would look better and be easier to use, so we set about working out what content should be on there and what it should look like.

You can access the site on any mobile device by visiting www.meetinleeds.co.uk (or if you're reading this on your desktop just scan the QR code on the right with your mobile) – it will automatically recognise your device and redirect you to our mobile website.  

We hope you like it and would love to hear your feedback!

No mystery to MEETinLEEDS’ latest triumph - by Matt Hamnett

Every now and then someone calls the conference sales office, asks a number of questions about our venues and, under a false name, makes an enquiry for a totally fictitious event that will never happen.  And we fall for it every time.

The conference sales team at MEETinLEEDS are constantly looking at ways in which we can improve how we work to help our customers create the event they’re looking for with as much ease as possible.

We've worked hard to put systems in place which allow our customers a seamless experience from making an enquiry to booking a venue and we pride ourselves on the level of knowledge our team has on all of our facilities.  Once the event is over then we ask the organisers, and the delegates too, if everything went as planned.  If for any reason something isn’t quite right then we make sure we know about it so that we can put it right next time.

Sometimes this isn’t quite enough though.  Whilst we’re quietly confident that we deliver a fantastic customer experience (and our feedback confirms this) it’s important that we look at our business through fresh eyes.  It’s for this reason that we allow a total stranger to conjure up these fabricated conferences as part of a mystery shopping program.  And we happen to do quite well in them!

Last year the team took part in several mystery shopping measures looking at their telephone and booking skills.  The mystery shopper assesses things such as: how quickly the call was answered; whether it was answered in a professional manner and whether the relevant person was able to take the call.  The sales team scored 91% and 100% on the last two occasions.

This year we wanted to look at how well we perform show-rounds at our venues, as well as the initial telephone enquiry, and we’re proud to say that we scored a fantastic 97.2%.

Of course all of these results don’t mean that we’ll be resting on our laurels.  We’ll continue to look for more ways that we can make ourselves even more helpful, and we’ll go on testing ourselves to make sure that we’re getting it right!

Read more about our Mystery Shopper by reading our news page.

Socially Adept - by Matt Hamnett

For a conference sales office at a major UK university we like to think of ourselves as a sociable, friendly and interesting group of people who will go out of our way to help our customers. For those of you who have been keeping up with this blog I hope that this has come across well: perhaps we’ve helped you manage your event, understand your competition or even cater for your in-laws?!

In order to show everybody just how sociable and helpful we are we use a number of very different online tools; we have a YouTube channel, a news page, a Flickr account, a regular email newsletter and of course this blog. 

All of these have been fantastic ways to keep in contact with our growing number of customers but it is our twitter account that has seen the most online progress.

Just recently we’ve moved past the 500 followers mark. Ok, we’ll never be a Stephen Fry or Justin Bieber, but seeing as we rarely promote ourselves on twitter we’re very pleased to have made an impression on so many people.

To satisfy this demand for more information on our venues and services, and in order to reach out to a different audience, we’ve developed a Facebook page.

We’re interested to see where this latest social space will take us and we hope you will join us by liking our Facebook page.

Live at Leeds – by Matt Hamnett

I was recently reminded just how lucky I am to work in such a diverse and interesting location.

Legendary rock band The Who have released a new version of their classic 1970 live album; Live at Leeds 40 years after it was first recorded and hailed, by the New York Times no less, as “the best live rock album ever made”.

This iconic and timeless album was recorded in one of our very own venues, The Refectory.  The same venue that just last month welcomed 550 guests, the majority of whom sit on the boards of the largest companies in the UK, to the highly prestigious CBI Annual Dinner.

Of course, The Refectory hasn’t turned its back on its musical past.  In 2002 we played host to The Strokes in a set described by the NME as “a landmark hour of flawless rock”.  Even as recently as last month Nick Cave, talking on stage, commented that he’d “...travelled the world over, but nowhere compares to the Leeds University cafeteria."

40 years later the album Live at Leeds still receives the greatest of plaudits from the critics, as does our Refectory!