Building Connection Through Social Storytelling

Professional organizations are built and sustained through their members. Meeting Professionals International (MPI) is no different and chapters across the globe rely on membership to keep themselves going. Without the work of volunteers there wouldn’t be nearly 70 MPI chapters worldwide. Every month the MPI Pittsburgh Chapter selects a member to highlight, and they have a feature in our monthly newsletter and a social post across our channels. In June, I wanted to try something different.

First things first, I took my plan to the board. The idea was simple, let our member of the month take over our socials (@mpipittsburgh) for a day to post anything they would like. It could be about their job, their work within the chapter, or her life outside of her career. Once the board agreed, I reached out to our June member of the month to see if this is something she would be interested in and she loved it! In a twist of luck, she was also attending MPI’s yearly World Education Congress (WEC) hosted in San Antonio, Texas. We decided she would send me pictures and videos of her at the week-long conference with updates of what she was doing and we would post them as a recap on the last day of the conference. She could send me full posts in her own words of what she was experiencing or just send over photos and we would put together the content.

The result was amazing! We saw a huge rise in our engagements and comments. We also had a few new members join our chapter! My goal with my tenure as Vice President of Marketing and Communications is to show the MPI Pittsburgh Chapter as more than an organization, but as a collection of people working toward a shared goal. And along the way having fun doing it.