Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success.

Transcription

1 Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success. amiando.com - September 2010

2 Table of Contents Executive Summary... 2 Why You Should Observe Your Audience... 3 The Data Source: Twitter and Ten Events... 3 Twitter... 3 The Events... 3 Analysis... 6 What We Wanted to Find Out... 6 General Statistics... 6 Twitter Behavior at Events... 7 Social Media and the Event Lifecycle... 9 Social Media Power Users A Last Word: Applying these Findings to Other Social Media The Authors About amiando event registration & ticketing Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 1

3 Executive Summary With the knowledge of more than 100,000 events worldwide that use amiando.com for online event registration, ticketing and Social Media marketing we thought it was about time to dig deeper into how social media is being used around events. The following study focuses on the actual use of Twitter and gives recommendations on how you can apply the findings to make your event a success. The most important findings are: 1. Twitter Behavior at Events The activity level of Twitter usage does not depend on the size of the event. The ratio of users who tweet about the event to event participants ranges from ten percent (i.e. every tenth person at the event posts about the event) up to 800% (i.e. eight times as many people tweet about the event as there are participants). 2. Social Media and the Event Lifecycle 60% of all Social Media communication takes place while the event is being held. The remaining 40% split evenly before and after the event whereby a second spike occurs a few days after the event. Over the various phases of the event lifecycle the quality of the tweets changes. 3. Social Media Power Users Like in most media also on Twitter there are power users that account for a large share of all tweets about the event: 35% of the users posted 80% of the Twitter content. Read more about these findings in the study and find out how you can use these results to get the most out of Social Media for your event. Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 2

4 Why You Should Observe Your Audience Did you ever wonder how attendees behave and what they are thinking before, during, and after your event? Today's Social Media tools allow you to find out exactly that while getting valuable feedback from the people you care most about, your customers. Social Media is, at its most basic sense, a shift in how people discover, read, and share news and information and content. It is a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologue (one to many) into dialog (many to many). Brian Solis' 1 definition points out the dialog that is enabled by the variety of communication channels available to users through Social Media. For the first time, conversation between consumer and provider is possible and this conversation can be systematically evaluated. For this study, we chose the field of events. In particular we focused on the conversation of event attendees on Twitter, which we considered as the medium which offers the highest and most dynamic level of activity needed for such an endeavor. The following study presents an analysis on participant feedback and takes a look at variations over ten events. The aim is to draw conclusions from the behavior of attendees of events over the medium Twitter. We then want to provide future event organizers with a reference so that they can evaluate themselves. The Data Source: Twitter and Ten Events Twitter To collect data for our analysis we chose the micro blogging site Twitter. First of all, there are many tools to easily draw data about specific events from Twitter. In this case here we used the program the Archivist 2. With this application we were able to get a more or less complete record of the discussion about special topics and events. Another reason why Twitter seems to be a suitable channel to use for a study like this is the fact that active Twitter users are so-called power users, up to date with the new technologies, and not afraid to experiment and share their ideas which means that feedback given by them is mostly on a qualitatively high level. Further, those people are able to think in 140 characters, i.e. they provide information with maximum content at minimum length. The Events It was first of all crucial that the events we wanted to observe are well-known and important, with topics focusing on the web, Social Media or internet technologies. These events were likely to host many active Twitter users whose activity could be observed and 1 Thought leader and author in new media. 2 The Archivist can be downloaded for free from Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 3

5 later be analyzed. Further, we considered it important to choose an international set of events from Europe, USA and Asia. Some events used amiando ( for event registration and ticketing, but this did not play a key role in their selection. Data was collected from April to May In the following short summaries of the 10 analyzed events are presented (in chronological order). Web 2.0 Expo 2010 (Web 2.0 Expo), San Francisco, USA Web 2.0 Expo showcases the latest Web 2.0 business models, development paradigms and design strategies. The attendees are next-generation web builders. MarketingProfs B2B Forum (MarketingProfs), Boston, USA The MarketingProfs B2B Forum has a broad-based B2B marketing educational program with a special focus on integration of Social Media and search engine optimization. The conference is for businesses who want to learn how to properly incorporate these procedures into their strategy to improve sales results. Frozen Rails, Helsinki, Finland Frozen Rails is a top-class Ruby on Rails 3 conference. The program of Frozen Rails includes presentations from internationally renowned speakers from the USA, Finland, and the rest of Europe. The organizers of Frozen Rails have a passion for Rails and for open source in general. Green Venture Summit (GVS), Berlin, Germany The Green Venture Summit 2010 is a new, international Cleantech conference, with topics from areas such as renewable energy, solar, wind, energy storage, energy efficiency, smart grid, smart home, green architecture, green agriculture, water and green management. The conference is targeted at startups, investors, thought leaders and successful ventures. Next 10 (Next), Berlin, Germany The Next 10 conference is one of the most important networking and trend conferences within the European web industry. It is the only conference that unites the Internet community with various brands and leading companies. Art Directors Club Summit (ADC), Frankfurt, Germany The ADC is considered to be the biggest meeting of the creative industry in the German speaking area. The ADC is divided into multiple sections: ADC Competition, ADC Expo, ADC Congress, ADC Awards Show and ADC Junior Days. 3 Ruby on Rails is an open source web development framework for the Ruby programming language. Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 4

6 SWITCH Conference (Switch), Coimbra, Portugal The aim of the Switch Conference is to get attendees together with scientists, entrepreneurs, thinkers, doers and everyone in between to share their knowledge, their experiences and their ideas to create awareness on scientific and technological matters. TEDxTokyo, Tokyo, Japan The goal of this conference is to spark deep discussions and connections in groups both intimate and expansive. TEDxTokyo combines live speakers and TEDTalks videos from the main TED conference. The intention is to help shape a sustainable future for Japan and the rest of the world. Future of Web Design (FOWD), London, UK The web design industry's leading and most inspirational conference puts the 'design' back in web design. FOWD offers sessions on the entire design process ranging from inspiration to build to project management. Gilbane Conference (Gilbane SF), San Francisco, USA The Gilbane Conference is focused on global, enterprise, and web content management technologies, enterprise search, text analytics and semantic technologies, collaboration & enterprise Social Media, XML and publishing technologies. Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 5

7 Analysis What We Wanted to Find Out In the following study, three main questions are addressed: 1. Twitter behavior at events: First of all, we want to look at the behavior of event attendees on Twitter. We want to know how many active Twitter users there are and what their level of activity is, i.e. how many messages related to a specific conference they write. Thereby we can get a general idea of the Twitter usage at events. 2. Social Media and the event lifecycle: The second point of interest is the Twitter usage over the event lifecycle. In this step we want to look at the main topics discussed over time in the Twitter community. The goal is here to find a pattern over time in order to give recommendations on what activity and content to focus on over the event lifecycle. 3. The most active Social Media users: The last question is about the group of active Twitter users who write about the events. We want to look at the level of activity of individual users. Thus we can find out if there are user groups to focus on when planning a Social Media campaign or strategy. General Statistics During the whole period we collected 31,442 tweets posted by 9,736 active Twitter users at ten events. This makes an average number of 3.2 tweets per person whereby the majority of active Twitter users only posted one tweet (see detailed analysis below). The events ranged from about 200 to several thousand participants and lasted 2.5 days on average. Number of tweets 31,442 Average number of tweets per user Average number of tweets per event Table 1: Descriptive statistics ,144 Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 6

8 Twitter Behavior at Events In the following we want to look at the distribution of active Twitter users and tweets per event compared to the number of attendees. Our tests showed that neither the number of tweets nor of active Twitter users per event seems related to the number of visitors. Instead we found another interesting phenomenon which is depicted in Figure 1: the ratio of active Twitter users versus the number of attendees reveals a wide range: at most events this ratio is smaller than one, i.e. there are less people who tweet about the event than attendees. But, surprisingly, some conferences have two to eight times more people who tweet about the event than attend it. 2 Most Events Have Less Active Twitter User Than Attendees 1 Ball size represents number of events Active-Twitter-users/attendees ratio Source: amiando.com, 2010 Figure 1: Ratio of active Twitter users vs. attendees. The explanation for this is that most (especially smaller) events are discussed in a certain community or interest group around it. This group naturally does not only consist of the few people that attend the conference. So people talk about the topics of the conference and mention the event despite they never attended it. For example at the MarketingProfs event there are two times more people tweeting about it than attendees. A lot of individuals who have not attended the conference have tweeted about it. They retweeted for example interesting findings of the panels, used the conference as a vehicle for not directly related information or just communicated within their peer group that they would not attend the conference. Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 7

9 Another example for this is the TEDxTokyo conference. Over eight times more active Twitter users talked about the event than physically participated. What is special about TEDxTokyo is that the conference was streamed live online so people could follow it from home. Only a selected set of people was invited to the live event. So here it is selfexplaining, why the ratio between attendees and active Twitter users is so high a lot of people watched it online and talked about it as if they were there. How to Use This for Your Event It is not about size but about content. The size of an event is not an indicator for Twitter activity, but the provision of content is. If you want your attendees to tweet about your conference, you have to offer them opportunities, i.e. material that they want to spread. One possibility here is to publish data online. Another means to provide additional content on your event is to make selected speeches available online, either live or via download on your site. Thus you reach a broader audience and thus more people talk about your event or share it - but be aware that your event becomes less exclusive to the visitors, in the worst case they would rather attend online than come to your conference. You have to make sure that the conference is still worth visiting. Finally, you can also animate your participants to tweet about your event by e.g. organizing raffles or other games for your active Twitter users. It is on you to provide material for Twitter activity. Think of the community around your event. Especially if your event is very small compared to the interest group around its topic, you have to take into consideration the people who do not attend your event but follow it on Twitter. In the first place they read what your participants present. The recommendation here is to monitor what the attendees tweet and then to react on it. For example you can retweet especially good feedback and citations from speeches or you can provide information you do not want to hold back from your online audience. The latter might also be your future customer, so make sure you take care of negative feedback and show presence on Twitter or other relevant channels. Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 8

10 Number of tweets Cumulative number of tweets amiando.com online event registration & ticketing Social Media and the Event Lifecycle To find out how active Twitter users behave over the lifecycle of an event, we assessed the distribution of the tweets over time. As can be seen in Figure 2 most tweets are posted during the event. A closer look at the skewness of the graph indicates a difference between the share of tweets before and after the event Twitter Usage Peaks at the Event Number of days before and after the event Source: amiando.com, 2010 Figure 2: Cumulative distribution of tweets before, during and after the event. This becomes even clearer in Figure 3. TEDxTokyo, as well as a lot of other events, shows a second, smaller peak about four days after the event. This second peak is caused by the publication of event content, e.g. video recordings, a few days after the event There Seem To Be Slightly More Tweets After the Event Number of days before and after the event ADC GVS Frozenrails Gilbanes Switch Next MarketingProfs TEDx FOWD Source: amiando.com, 2010 Figure 3: Distribution of tweets before, during and after the event. Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 9

11 A more detailed analysis (Figure 4) reveals that the difference between the number of tweets before and after the event is minor. With more than half of the tweets, i.e. 60%, the main conversation takes place during the event; the activity after the event is more intensive by only a slight trend of four percent. To assess the tweets over time in more detail, it is of interest, what quality the tweets are, i.e. what the attendees talk about in their posts. The Majority of All Tweets Is Posted During the Event Tweets after event 22% Tweets before event 18% Tweets during event 60% Source: amiando.com, 2010 Figure 4: Percentage of tweets before, during and after the event. For this analysis a significant sample of tweets was randomly selected and each of them was read and categorized. Three categories were established, positive, negative and neutral. This categorization scheme gives a rough idea about the content of the tweets. Negative means that active Twitter users wrote something negative about the event, for example that they were not content with the speaker or with the organization. A positive comment meant that they appreciated something related to the event, for example they wrote something positive about the content of a presentation or speaker. Tweets about something else, for example information or off-topic questions were placed in the neutral category. Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 10

12 Most Tweets Are Neutral positive; 8.45% negative; 0.35% neutral; 91.20% Source: amiando.com, 2010 Figure 5: Classification of tweets. As shown in Figure 5, most tweets were neutral. They represented 91.2% of the total number of tweets. 8.45% of tweets were positive, while the percentage of negative tweets was practically negligible, representing only 0.35%. Here is a wrap-up what the dominant topics before, during and after the event were: Before the event Who is attending Carpool organization Advertisements of the organizers, hotels What session to attend Announcements of speakers Program information, latest news by organizers During the event Information sharing Citations of speakers Last-minute advertisements of the organizers, speakers, exhibitors Private conversations Comments on the conference and related occurrences After the event (positive) Feedback on the event Take-aways from the event Topic related things Links on material from the event Table 2: Content of tweets. Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 11

13 The event-lifecycle analysis combined with a qualitative assessment of the tweets provides a good basis for interpretation. We have seen that most of the tweets were neutral. This is confirmed by the wrap-up of the dominant topics listed in Table 2: Most of the topics are not direct feedback on the event or organization. The tweets rather contain information or citations that are shared, communicative messages or advertisements before and at the event. This shows that Twitter is primarily used as an informative channel, most messages contain conference or topic related information and links - especially after the event. Twitter is rarely used as a feedback channel, but if so, then mainly positive feedback is shared. The interpretation for this can also be found in nature of Twitter as an information channel. Most of the positive feedback is posted together with a link or a source. Therefore, readers are able to follow the positive opinion of the author. Some positive feedback also contains hints or recommendations directed at the reader - as if the purpose was to teach something. Negative feedback, for example on the organization, seems to be harder to understand for the readers. How to Use This for Your Event Pay special attention to Twitter activity during the event. During the event, active Twitter users post a lot of information, either on the conference or directly on the speeches. From these posts valuable learnings can be drawn, for example what are the hot topics, or what is the best speech. With this information systematic advertisements can be placed or other short notice program activities for the benefit of the attendees can be initiated. The recommendation here is to carefully monitor Twitter and decide on an appropriate reaction. The monitoring can be automated with a tool like Tweetdeck 4. It is a tool which displays all messages to an event and its related hashtags in real time and allows you to keep track of all messages so that you can plan your reactions carefully. Provide online material after the event. We have seen that even after the event Twitter usage can be fostered. The event is not finished after the actual happening is over - the active Twitter users talk about it for a few days. For an event organizer or speaker the days after the event are perfect for preparing a wrap-up and other material and put it 4 Tweetdeck can be downloaded for free from Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 12

14 Cumulative percentage of Twitter users amiando.com online event registration & ticketing online after a few days. Thus the attendees get new input on their discussion to share and a new peak occurs. Social Media Power Users The maximum number of tweets written by one person was 399, followed by another individual with 219 tweets. But most of the active Twitter users, specifically 6,347 (65%), tweeted only once and 1,235 active Twitter users wrote two tweets. Figure 6 shows the distribution of tweets among all active Twitter users it becomes obvious that a fairly small part produces the majority of tweets: 35% are responsible for 80% of the posts. 35% of the Active Twitter Users Produce 80% of the Tweets 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Cumulative percentage of tweets Source: amiando.com, 2010 Figure 6: Active Twitter users vs. tweets per event. The analysis shows that there are a lot of random users and a relatively small part of power users. This distribution is a common phenomenon. The power users are those who tweet a lot and have in addition to that usually a very large group of followers, i.e. a lot of people read what they write. Thus they have great influence. They owe their followers the news and thus they keep on tweeting - however, only few people have this status. In contrast to the power users, people who tweet only one or two times usually have a very Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 13

15 small entourage on Twitter. They do not feel the obligation to tweet so much information and are less influential. The majority of the people belong to this group How to Use This for Your Event Pay attention to the power users. Power users make only a small part of the people who are tweeting at events, but they have a lot of influence. Their many followers read and retweet their tweets or comment them. Thus they are strong multipliers for both, positive and also negative comments. Further, power users are also a good indicator for the hot topics of the conference and therefore represent a valuable source of information which can be used for systematic marketing and advertisement campaigns. Our recommendation is to monitor power users carefully. You can use the free online tool Twittergrader 5 to evaluate how influential a Twitter user is. In case of negative posts, immediate action is required e.g. by answering them or taking care of the problem brought up by them. Encourage the random users. The users who post only one or two messages can be animated to tweet more. The best way to do that is to directly address them and start a conversation. Thus they notice that others are reading their messages and feel encouraged to tweet more, e.g. feedback or information. Also the small users can be turned into information sources. A Last Word: Applying these Findings to Other Social Media With this study we wanted to find pattern in the behavior of active Twitter users at events. We have found some valuable insights and have drawn conclusions which help to optimize the usage of Twitter as a Social Media channel for events. However, the findings and implications we have presented in this study are based on the usage of Twitter only. But Social Media in general consist of a lot more channels than only Twitter. Although Twitter is a widely-used dynamic medium there are a lot more channels to take into consideration when planning an integrated Social Media strategy. The results we gained here might not have occurred in the same way in other Social Media. But we also want to point out that a lot of the recommendations we gave can be applied to other Social Media, too. 5 Twittergrader can be accessed for free at Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 14

16 The Authors Dennis von Ferenczy Co-founder Head of Business Development & Strategy Sandro Spiess Social Media Marketing Manager Anja Staudt Social Media Marketing Manager About amiando event registration & ticketing amiando ( is a pioneer for online registration and ticketing. Since its founding in 2006 amiando has become a leading software-as-a-service platform for professional events. amiando s products help event organizers reach a professional level of event organization that until now was only reserved for large corporations and event agencies. All tools are online-based and immediately available for use, no software installation required. Over 100,000 events worldwide use amiando for invitation management, participant registration, online promotion and payment handling, among them such prestigious names as Facebook, BMW, UNESCO, and Telefónica O2. amiando has been awarded numerous prizes for its innovative products, among them the Technology Pioneer of 2010 at the World Economic Forum, and the eco Internet Award as the best business client portal. The company is supported by prestigious Venture Capitalists such as Wellington Partners, Adinvest, and a network of international Business Angels Information, Links amiando: amiando features: amiando press: amiando blog: Contact Dennis von Ferenczy Phone: +49.(0) Tumblingerstr Munich, Germany dennis.ferenczy@amiando.com Social Media: How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter To Make Your Event A Success 15