Raise your hand if you like company meetings? Us too! We like who we work with and try to keep them as fun as possible. Creativity helps as well, but not all meetings can be fun. Or can they? The reality is this: they’re important and absolutely necessary, but a company meeting is essentially a blank canvas. You can paint something boring on it or you can create something amazing. You can create something amazing on the canvas without even using paint! If you haven’t considered using text messaging to improve the interactivity and engagement at your next company meeting, come on in. People are going to be looking at their phones, there’s a great opportunity here to put those mobiles to other good uses.
While the ability to send text messages for company meetings is still relatively new, it seems that these days that we’re barely able to function without it. Text messaging (SMS, texting, etc) has moved well beyond the realm of friends and family communicating more efficiently. It’s being used more and more by businesses to promote products and to communicate with customers. And not just externally. Corporations are increasingly coming to appreciate how text messaging can be used to facilitate efficient team communications.
Text Messaging To The Rescue
Texting allows town hall and meeting participants to truly participate in a new way, making it a useful tool at company meetings. While a very simple technology, enabling mobile users to send up to 160 characters, it’s incredibly powerful, you just need to apply a little creativity to the medium (not unlike the blank canvas that is your company meeting).
Here are a few ideas to create more sparks at your next company meeting:
Encourage Questions
Enabling staff to text in their questions before the meeting makes things more efficient and move along faster. It also provides management with a host of questions staff might have that they can address later.
Pre-Event Surveys
Send out a survey in advance of the meeting to gather information and insights. Depending on what you ask, you can come in more prepared on the meeting approach and better strategize your format.
Raffles or Giveaways
Have people text in a key phrase to be entered to win. Pick a number randomly to see who wins and then send them a text to let them know they won. See “Award Punctuality” below for a way to combine the two.
Idea Sharing
Mobile photos are a great way for people to show or share their visual ideas about something. If you’re using text to screen software, those photos can be projected up onto a screen for everyone to see. Bonus points if the text-to-screen software provider you use support emojis.
Polls and Voting
Trying to get consensus on a topic or idea? Text message polls are a great way to let everyone have a say, privately, if necessary. Making a poll is also a great way to use creativity and make it fun for people to participate. Have fun with them and others will too.
Tease and Reveal
Send an alert in advance to the team to let them know about some special guest or new piece of information. Suspense is a great way to build anticipation of something to come at an event.
Agenda in Advance
Agendas keep things running smoothly because they prepare everyone with what is going to be covered and in what order. If you’re an organization that prides itself in running short meetings, you either provide agendas for each meeting or you have a simple format. Sending out an agenda in advance (or reminder of your format) via text message keeps everyone on the same page.
Award Punctuality
We’ve read about companies that make people who are late sing. While probably incredibly motivating, everyone is late at some point, because: clients, co-workers, email isn’t sending, fax isn’t going through (people still use faxes and that still happens). You can use text messaging as a time stamp by having everyone text a word in that is written on a board for X minutes. Or you can use that same word be entry into a raffle. Or…if you’re into shaming the tardy, have everyone at the meeting take photos of those who are late, post them to a screen for the world to see. We don’t recommend this last idea, but we bet some people would rather have their photo up on a screen than have to sing to the group.
Suggestion Box
Some people love raising their hands and speaking their minds. In some of the others, brilliant insights and ideas are going unheard. By encouraging people to text their ideas and comments in, they can do so quietly, efficiently. All information can be looked at and easily shared later in it’s natural digital format vs handwritten notes on paper or written on a whiteboard.
We hope these have been helpful and wish you the best in making your next company meeting a successful and creative one. Hey! While we have your attention, did you know we sell text messaging software for company meetings? If you’re interested in learning more about it, you can visit us or sign up for a free trial to take it for a spin. All of the ideas above can be done using Mosio’s software.