Welcome everybody we're so thrilled. We feel like this is such a milestone for getting closer to ONA21. We are less than a month out from our start date. We wanted to take this opportunity to walk you through building your Grip profile as a company as well as as a sponsor representative.
You may notice that it's May, and the attendees won't be joining until June 14th. This is purposeful. We wanted to make sure that all of you have as much time as possible to feel comfortable with your profiles, as well as with the platform, so that when the attendees join on June 14th, you feel like you have a really good foundation on which to start networking. So I'm going to be going through as though I'm starting from scratch for the most part with my very "coolly" named company. If you guys have any questions don't hesitate to stop me, and this is meant to be really casual, and hopefully, really helpful for you. So I'll be sharing my screen.
And here we are. So, front page if you haven't looked at it yet. You'll have an email asking you to activate, and this is the first screen that it'll take you to. So, if you haven't had a chance yet to go in here, I'll give you a very quick walkthrough of what to expect. So this is your homepage right now. I'm making it really clear again that it's under construction because we're building this right alongside you all. We actually just got access to Grip for this last week. And so, again, we wanted you guys to have as much time as possible and that meant that you'll be seeing some of the parts of the sausage getting made.
But when the event is live, "Recommended for You" is going to be where the AI that's part of Grip is going to be making recommendations in terms of who they think you might want to meet with this will be based on interests, job roles, etc. And then there are other ways that keep things organized so when folks are interested in you, you'll get an asynchronous message, you'll also see them in a list here. "Connections" are just that — folks that you have made a connection with either by mutually expressing interest in each other, or scheduling a meeting. "Your [My] Interested" list is similar in that you haven't gotten quite to [making] connections, but you're interested. Skip lists that people that you've decided you did not want to connect with. Your schedule of meetings and events, and if you're participating in the Career Day, events that are taking place. The Exhibitors and Recruiters are split up here just to make it easier for folks who might be looking for jobs as part of Career Day. But you will find everybody here, and you can go back to the ONA21 lobby. There will also be listings here for attendees as well as the sponsor representatives.
So, let's go right into what you'd be doing in terms of building your, your company page. If this was the first time that you were logging in, there would be a bunch of prompts here for you as the sponsor representative/attendee to be filling out some information, approving whether you want your data to be tracked, whether you want your email to be shared. I'll take a moment on the email to be shared part — that's new in Grip this year if you participated last year. As you likely know, with GDPR and California regulations there are a lot of privacy issues in terms of proactively sharing email and other identifying contact information. What Grip has done, rather than saying you only can share contact information through chat, for example, is offer folks the opportunity that if they want to proactively share their email and or phone number, they can do that publicly — meaning publicly within Grip; they can do it only with folks with whom they've made a connection; or not at all, so it would still be limited to only sharing in a chat. for example. As sponsor representatives, you may want to consider whether you want to have an email address that you are sharing publicly to offer folks as many ways as possible to connect with you. Otherwise, it's for the most part very self-explanatory, and we do have the guide that walks you through those first couple of steps.
What I want to focus on is creating Teams. So Teams is right here, this is going to be the button that you're pushing for anything related to the backend Teams organization for your company. It shows up first on the meetings page. Obviously this isn't as relevant to us at this point, but here is where you're going to see all of your team members' availability and meeting scheduled through the week of the conference.
We're going to be starting, however, with Team Members. So, to invite folks on your team, each of you will be activating as the first member of your team, meaning that you'll be the admin for your team at this time. You can invite team members here, and by adding their information, they're going to get an email asking them to activate their Grip account. Now you can make them . . . (let's see, I'm going to invite my husband.) So you can make them Team Members or Admins, and the difference between the two is that the Admins can add more members, or delete members, and the team members otherwise have all the same accessibility as the Admin. So in terms of seeing the company chat, in terms of the company profile, etc., you can do all of that. Some people choose to make just everybody admins to make it super simple. Some people like to have just one person who's controlling that piece of it. It's really up to you how you want to manage this. It does not affect the usability of your account or how people will network with you. And nobody outside of your company's team will even see that part.
Now, when you see the invite sent successfully, you will have this option of copying the invitation link. So I'm going to copy it just to show you what it looks like if somebody is receiving an invitation link in this way to join your team either because you've shared this link with them directly, or because they receive that email they click through, they're going to receive this. They can create their password here and set up their account, and it's very simple.
Just real quickly. This might be obvious but can we share with anybody who isn't an attendee of the ONA conference.
This is a great question, Adam. So, so, yes, actually. Now some folks want to participate in terms of the exhibiting & networking side of ONA from your company, but either you don't have the, the correct number of passes or they simply are not going to be participating in the programming so you don't want to use that pass on them. You can invite members here to help you out in Grip, even if they're not participating in the rest of the conference. The two pieces are separate.
So that might be used for someone to look over leads or to schedule things or without . . .
Mmhmm! So, having access to Grip does not mean that they will also be able to access the ONA21 conference. If they were to go, as you may recall, on the homepage to the ONA21 lobby, it'd be asking them to log in there because there is a separate paywall. But folks who are registered would be able to go back and forth, pretty seamlessly after that first activation.
Okay, so we have our team members here. Next thing, we're going to go to our Company Profile. So we're going to be building this out — this is the back end of it, and frankly, it's pretty similar to what it looks like on the front end as well. If we were to go to [mumbling to myself as I pull up a new tab . . .]
If we were to go to a company's profile now, you're going to see that some of them already have some of the items that we'll be uploading on their profile and some folks don't. This is, in part, because they have either submitted information already through the Sponsor Information Form, and so Bill has had an opportunity to be able to preload some of that stuff, or they've asked for information from their profile last year ,if they participated in the conference from their ONA20 group profile to be ported over. Bill, can you tell me one that I would find some stuff in?
Yes, Alley is up to date from this year.
Okay, so we're gonna Alley right now, they already have their header right here, they have their headline. You can see the details here that they've already added, and Daniel is going to be the first person who logs in from the company, so he's the only one listed, but once others from the team are invited and activated, you'll see all of them here. You'll also see here the part that I think is super great about how Grip operates.
So anybody can proactively come to your company's page to request a meeting, and that's why it's so important for you and your team members to have your calendar set by June 14th, so that when folks come over they can schedule those conversations with you. It's just a really great thing about about the functionality and the two way opportunities for folks to be able to schedule those meetings.
So we've seen what what the page looks like. We're gonna build it out. Here, the header image . . . okay, so the header I actually made one that just has the information for here So it's 1476 pixels by 634. Grip is very specific and particular about the pixels that you use in terms of measurements so we have all those listed in the Sponsor Information Form. Things are ... you can't resize or play around with it in ways that you can on other types of networks, so be sure that you have this one since it's the very top of your page correct. We're gonna save it. We have our company name already: Cat Gifs for Journalists, but I've noticed that somehow my name ported over wrong, so I'm going to erase that second "cat." We have our headline already. Let's add our picture in. So here the recommended size is 1000 x 1000 pixels. I have one that's 800 by 800. We're gonna see that it's too small. Okay, so it worked out because it's still a square, but do keep in mind the sizing.
Video URL. So this is one that's a little bit more complicated. So, for the Video URL, you are able to embed a video from Vimeo or YouTube. I'm going to show you how to do it from YouTube with a video that I had from from last year. What you do: you go to your YouTube video (I don't need to talk to you guys about using only your own videos and all that, you know) You go to share. You go to embed. You're not going to take this whole thing. If you see right here, there's a URL that has quotation marks around it. Here's a quotation mark, and here's a quotation mark. So you want to just take the inside of the quotation marks. Okay, so you take that, copy it, and then you go back, and you add that here. Okay, so now when I save this and everything will go over, we'll make sure that it worked. But that should be embedding.
One of the things that is frustrating about Grip, and I actually have made a video that includes Sarah McLaughlin music, requesting that they please, please, get rid of this, but they really love raw URLs. And to make the URL clickable, you must add the http or https. If you don't, it's just going to be a raw URL that somebody has to copy and paste. It's what it is. So, so please do be sure that you put it, go just put in the www but you actually do the https.
journalists.org . . . two have slashes, right.
Okay. And we're updating. I'm not going to bother going through all this, but same thing for all of these. You're not just going to put your Facebook group name, you're not going to put your just @ [for Twitter], you have to put the whole URL.
For Products and Services, you can click on as many as you want that are relevant to you. So I had mentioned earlier that there were ways that folks can find you, either through the AI making recommendations, but also Grip is super, super filterable and searchable, so these are the sorts of options that are available for folks to be able to search. They're looking for things that are, you know, they're looking for consultants or they're looking for analytics tools — this is how they're going to find you. So be sure to go through these carefully and choose the ones that are applicable to you.
There's a few others, so there's Products and Services, there's Organization Type, that's also clickable — we have prefilled options. And then other things: Talk to Me About, and Learn More About Opportunities to Work with Us if you're a recruiter, all those that you can type in answers. One thing that I'd like to just point out is that rather than putting in, like "job, internship" and then add, you should actually do "job", add. And then . . . oh this one's only line for one, sorry that's a bad one to choose. And "job," add and then you can put . . .I'm choosing all the bad examples! It's just going to do it to me too. I did this in profiles yesterday. Okay, so it's not gonna work on your company profile, and I'm going to figure out why that is, but on your personal profile, you're going to have the ability to add more items. So instead of doing a list that's separated by comma put in like "job," add, "internship," add, and it'll separate nicely on your profile.
To enter them independently of each other through them independently.
Yes, exactly. Thank you, Adam.
Sure.
Your summary is basically your description. If your company description, if you're on your company profile is your company description; if it's your sponsor representative, that's your bio. Grip is a UK based company, hence organization spelled with an S and summary rather than by bio. So, we love cats. And this round, we're going to update my profile. Okay, so now we're going to go take a look at our profile.
Here we are. So we see the banner showed up here, we see the delighful cat here, we see the video embedded correctly, and we see that we can click on the links, because we added the https. And then we also see that I have myself and my cat coworker right here. And folks would be able to schedule their meetings with us.
So that is building your company profile page. It's pretty straightforward, but there are a few little things to take note of. Does anybody have any questions about, about this piece?
No.
Okay, while we're here, I'm going to walk you through this part very quickly. Company Chat. Once the event is live, there will be an option on your page — on your company page that people can ask questions, and anybody from your team would be able to see and respond to those questions. If somebody expresses a question that means that they're going to be one of your inbound leads, and your team members would be able to schedule the appropriate person for the person to meet with, if that makes sense. Otherwise you can continue the conversation or move it to one of your staff members, or your colleagues [to] direct chat. You're gonna . . . it's very clearly laid out once the event is live, you'll be able to see how many have not been reviewed by you or your colleagues, how many you have and how many total leads you have. When the list is going to show up, you're going to see the different ways that they have connected with you or shown interest in you, including that they have "viewed you," which means that they have viewed your sponsor representative [page] as you're the person who is logged in, or has viewed your company — it'll actually say "has viewed Cat Gifs for Journalists." And what I always say to everyone, just so we're all clear, just because you know that information doesn't mean you should share that with a person with whom you are connecting. Nobody wants to know about the Big Brother pieces.
And then Your Contacts here: these are all the folks that you have actually connected with rescheduled with as a team. And what's great about that is that at the end, you can do it before but frankly is more efficient at the end, you can export that list, as a CSV, as a team. So you as an individual from your own profile would be able to access your own CSV here — export the data from your accepted meetings at this event — or your team can do it together, or both.
And that's it! I mean, it is a very efficient system for creating a foundation on which you can network with others, and connecting you with folks on your team, and making it as easy as possible for you all to communicate with one another and with the folks that you're trying to reach, even if you're not seeing each other in person at the office. So anybody have any questions about any of this? Bill or Leah, is there anything that I am missing that I should be sure to highlight?
I don't think you're missing anything, I'd like to make a plug for something semi-related, if I can. So, this isn't the only way we're going market you folks. I need you to go into your exhibitor or your Sponsor Information Center. I need a logo and a description. We'll put that in our Industry Directory, and that'll stay up for a year, but we use that information also to pull over to our sponsor page, and again, it'll market you that way. I think Hanaa is trying to find that right now.
So this is your Sponsor Information Form. You're gonna find it at the bottom of the Sponsor Information Center, which is also where we're posting helpful information. The guide is going to be going up later today, and our contacts are all here. But this is a really critical piece that he is, that Bill is speaking to right now. Yes, so please do share all this by June 1st.
And if I get it before then I'll toss as much info as you give me on that into Grip for you.
Thank you.
All right. If nobody has any questions, and that's fine if you don't, this isn't the only way to connect with us or to ask your questions, there are office hours happening Tuesday through Friday of this week, and, additionally, you can just reach out to us at any time while you're building your page or you have any questions about Grip. We will be hosting a webinar on June 7th that talks about the networking specifically. We'll talk about the best practices, and we're also going to talk about, structurally on Grip, how do you network. So those questions we'll get to those, you'll also have written versions of those details.
We're so happy that you're a part of ONA21 All of you support our organization and the community as a whole and thank you so much. We hope that this was helpful.
