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!

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!