Simplifying the Complex: How Merjj Supports Teams and Fosters Real Connections

Over the past few years, the workplace has transformed in ways we couldn’t have imagined. With more teams working remotely and the distance growing between colleagues, we’ve all felt the shift. What once came naturally in a physical office—those quick chats, the impromptu brainstorms, and the overall company culture—has now been replaced by a sea of virtual communications and countless software platforms. That community, which used to happen naturally, now needs to be strategically developed and communicated.

And from an administration standpoint, it’s overwhelming—tracking platforms, ensuring compliance with strict IT security, and figuring out how to keep information flowing to the right people at the right time. From the employee side, it can be exhausting keeping track of multiple logins, registering, and navigating the mass amount of virtual content to find what is relevant for you. It’s a lot. We get it.

But that’s where programs like Merjj come in. Merjj has one, simple goal: to make communication easier for everyone. Merjj makes it easy for companies to manage communications and for employees to find the content relevant to them.

We understand that business content is now competing with everything else online—from advertising, to tutorials, videos, images, endless reports, and documentation. It’s a lot of noise, and standing out is tough. Merjj was built with that in mind. We designed it to feel familiar, like the platforms your employees already use daily. Whether it’s on their phones, tablets, or computers, Merjj makes it easy to connect with your team and ensure important information is not getting lost in the shuffle.

Let’s face it: we no longer have the luxury of a captive audience sitting in the office all day or attending multi-day conferences. And 90-minute live sessions? It’s hard to hold anyone’s attention for that long anymore. Business content now competes with everything available online and all the distractions at home, so it is important for a business to think differently and reimagine how they can create solutions for remote team collaboration; all while supporting positive actions through incentives and engagement. Merjj offers cloud-based communication tools for businesses, meeting employees where they are and helping you stay relevant and connected.

Shorter, more frequent communication is the key that helps keep your team engaged without pulling them away from their work. Just because we’ve lost the daily water cooler chats doesn’t mean we can’t still foster connections. Frequent, thoughtful messaging can help people feel more in tune with their organization’s mission and values, without being a time drain.

Even with fewer in-person interactions, businesses can still invest in building a strong culture and community. Remote teams need to feel that sense of belonging and purpose just as much, if not more, than they did before. Using collaborative tools for distributed teams, like Merjj, can help keep that spirit alive.

Having a platform that centralizes and curates communication for every individual is more than just a convenience—it’s essential. If you’re looking to boost employee engagement, streamline communication processes, and improve remote team collaboration, Merjj is the solution you need.

Centralize, Engage, and Boost Productivity: Meet Merjj, Your Communication Solution

Companies function a little different these days. Remote work, flex hours, cloud-based software, and countless communication tools have forced us all to reimagine communication across our workforce.

There have been a lot of positive shifts, but there have also been a lot of challenges – particularly for employees trying to find information relevant to them, leading to exhaustion, disinterest, and disengagement. Don’t even get us started on uploading and managing all of this content.

The consensus is that there is a lot of material and an overwhelming number of delivery systems, like Meta, Workvivo, and Simpplr… but what if you just needed one?

This is where Merjj, one of the best pieces of software for centralizing team communication, comes in. It allows an organization to streamline communication processes by centralizing, segmenting, and directing relevant materials, including videos, articles, documents—and even events & livestreams—to the right people.

Merjj is a robust system that brings together an organization’s social functions, learning, events, and most notably, cloud-based communication tools for businesses.

Merjj enables organizations to accommodate video content, digital documentation, and communications, while improving efficiency. Merjj lets you rethink your communication and content deployment strategies, crafting bite-sized bursts of content, similar to social media.

Increase engagement through scheduled content deployment and build connected work habits through the use of this team collaboration platform. This in turn will foster a stronger sense of connection and belonging within the organization.

The goal is to ensure seamless communication across devices so employees can easily access the knowledge and understanding of their roles, as well as the company’s objectives.

Building this communication plan doesn’t have to be difficult either. Consider the following steps:

  1. Identify annual milestones
  2. Create monthly and seasonal themes
  3. Highlight weekly features
  4. Invite brand or departmental content contributions
  5. Be prepared to share those organic, spur of the moment updates

With this structure in place, the content plan can be easily integrated into Merjj and distributed to the relevant employees.

Centralize your content. Build a deployment strategy. Increase employee engagement. Boost productivity. That’s Merjj.

Curious to learn more about Merjj? Reach out to our team and book a demo.

5 Keys to Success for Virtual Events

Empty Stage Podium

So you need to host a virtual event but you don’t know where to start?

You’re not alone!

There are a number of factors that lead to a successful online event. Just like classic “real-world” events, careful thought and solid planning are required. In many ways, virtual events can be more effective than in-person events since they can provide deeper engagement opportunities and richer metric tracking.

When executed properly, virtual events can bring your brand and message to life in exciting and innovative ways. Merjj can help you deliver an effective event that will strengthen your brand, achieve your business objectives, and maximize your investment.

Here are 5 keys to success when planning your first, or next, virtual event:

1

Prepare, Prepare, Prepare

It may surprise you to learn that virtual events require at least the same (and sometimes much more) effort and time to plan as in-person events! Ensuring that your event lives up to its potential requires you to plan well in advance.

Whether you are planning a large annual event, or creating a one-off business symposium or trade show, it’s important to consider every aspect of the event. This includes, but is not restricted to, your messaging, audience, speakers, content and sponsors. There are a lot of moving parts and it’s important to create a realistic production timeline.

Merjj offers total customization of your business content to capture your objectives and goals, online engagement with gamification, ROI tracking, customized live video and much more!

2

Define Your Audience, Message, and Objectives

It’s essential to define your users, or audience. That will shape the overall content creation and delivery. Merjj is flexible enough to deliver custom content to a wide array of users.

Begin by deciding which languages you want to offer to your audience, whether it’s English-only, Bilingual, or separate English and French. This is often the determining factor that will drive the curation phase, as well as the critical path, for your planning team.

Then, articulating your messaging strategy, and objectives, ensures that your content will resonate with your audience. Although it can be tricky to conceptualize virtual events if one is used to in-person gatherings, the same definition of core messaging and objectives is essential.

Merjj can replicate many in-person features and can also go above and beyond to provide effective engagement via customized content tracks. You decide what to serve up, to which groups of your audience, in their language of choice, and at the time of their choice.

3

Select The Right Online Platform

The virtual and hybrid event market is expected to continue growing through 2021 and beyond, so the number of platforms to choose from will continue to expand as well. It’s essential to select the right platform to ensure that your virtual event is a success, and that your brand is represented powerfully online.

But hey, no pressure!

A lot of software companies promise certain features such as customization and engagement, but lack the skill, production quality, and knowledge required to stage great events.

Merjj was built from the ground up by industry experts from our sister company, Human Contact. We can create a flexible and intuitive interface that will deliver your business objectives while delighting your customers and other stakeholders. We’ve already conducted many virtual events for premium brands and organizations with great success, and we’d be delighted to do the same for you.

4

Seek Out Creative and Production Professionals

Attempting to define and create all of the creative elements for your virtual event by yourself is like herding cats. Not just regular cats, but particularly ornery ones!

It’s an enormous job that requires a high level of skill, experience, and specialized hardware and software. Deliverables including high-res video, graphic design, and game customization all need to be conceived, created, and embedded into your virtual event platform.

With our robust production power, Merjj can plan, manage, and create all aspects of content required for your event. Having materials come from the same source also ensures alignment, consistency, and – most importantly – ensures delivery of a positive and lasting impression.

5

Post-Event Engagement is Critical!

Engagement after the event has concluded is very valuable! But it can be difficult to achieve, depending on the nature of the event and your users.

Merjj allows for continuous communication during the event. But it can last beyond the event and also become a conduit for ongoing communications and content.

Conducting post-event surveys and questionnaires with your users can provide important insights into the efficacy of your event and inform changes and enhancements for future events. This seamless extension of engagement with your users will serve to strengthen their bond to your business.

Solved! How to Convert In-Person Events into Virtual Experiences

Podium On Stage Illustration

The Benefit of Events

Why are events so important?

In-person events bring people together and really emphasize the value of human connection. Through successful planning and execution, it’s clear why “real-life” events have been a major communication, engagement, and culture-enriching tool for companies of all sizes.

Yes, they require a significant investment in terms of time, labor, and travel costs. But events have a unique ability to pay enormous dividends when done properly.

Then along came 2020, which threw a wrench into everyone’s plans due to the pandemic. Large, in-person events are essentially off the table for the foreseeable future, and may never return to their previous manifestation. If there is a silver lining, it’s that we are rapidly adapting to new, virtual ways of connecting with family, friends, colleagues and customers alike.

Rather than walking away from events for an indeterminate period of time, it makes much more sense to stage virtual events for your key audiences, employees, and other stakeholders.

Let us walk you through the basics of creating successful virtual events!

Now What?

Yes, you can build and grow your brand during this unprecedented time!

By employing a flexible, robust virtual platform (like Merjj), you can engage audiences with enhanced content while communicating, tracking, and analyzing all touchpoints and data. Our platform strategically replicates the important human connection element from in-person events by transforming them into unique online experiences.

Merjj isn’t a “one size fits all” platform. It allows for complete brand and company customization for any event. From large conferences, to trade shows, to sales meetings, to non-profit events, companies of all sizes are now able to create rich and immersive environments for their stakeholders. Not only can you easily engage with users from around the world, you can track the efficacy of your communications and content, and effectively measure ROI based on the available data.

How to Choose the Right Virtual Event Platform

Reimagining your real-life event as a virtual one can be an overwhelming process in a number of ways, especially if it’s the first time you’ve tackled it.

To begin, you need to comprehend, and plan for, the inherent differences between a “real world” event and an online environment. Then, since all your content and programs must be adapted to this online environment, you’ll need to partner up with a capable vendor that offers a robust virtual event platform.

Have we mentioned that Merjj is an ideal choice?

There are many critical factors to consider when you are choosing the platform for your next virtual event. You need to ensure that the vendor is:

  1. Experienced, and able to grasp the complexities of your brand and its message
  2. Staffed with event industry professionals that can hit the ground running
  3. Flexible and responsive, to accommodate your unique requirements
  4. Reliable and robust; that their technical solution is solid and dependable
  5. Able to provide extensive tracking of engagement and ROI
  6. Capable of creating professional graphic, video, 3D and immersive content
  7. Cognizant of the importance of executing without a hitch!

What Every Brand Needs: A Virtual Experience Platform

Annual in-person events were an important part of driving one’s business objectives and generating positive brand engagement, along with lead generation and product awareness. Through innovative content and product development, stimulating panels, breakout sessions, and social events, it’s easy to see how live events help to maintain and grow a company’s business.

Some might say that the “new normal” of virtual events is missing some key elements of live events. There’s no doubt that the experience of gathering in large groups in real life is unrivalled in many ways, but it’s important to note that virtual events can bring even more to the table when conceived and executed properly.

With Merjj, you can streamline the enrollment process, provide engaging creative content, host real-time addresses by key executives or speakers, engage users with gamification and entertainment, deliver content in your audience’s language of choice, and so much more. Additionally, instead of being restricted to short time frames, you can keep the portal live to allow users to engage on their own terms, as their schedules permit.

And the best part? You can track all aspects of engagement and interactions.

Our platform is designed to be the center of your engagement strategy with content built around your business objectives and goals. Why wait? Contact us now.