Practical Guide to Social Media Activities at Events

Transcription

1 CONTENTS Practical Guide to Social Media Activities at Events 01 Why? 02 Start with Analytics 03 Before the Event p2 p3 p4 04 During the Event p5 This is a practical guide to integrating social media with professional events - starting before the doors are open and taking you right through to the after party. The main focus is on activities deployed during the event as these are often overlooked. At ThinkWall, we have a lot of experience working side by side with event organisers and marketers to successfully produce awesome events that keep the client and the audience happy. We work with clients of various sizes both locally and globally, delivering our on-site digital display service to meet key objectives at events - namely increasing buzz, interaction and feedback submission. 05 Q&A 06 Feedback 07 Networking 08 After the Event 09 What Next? p7 p8 p9 p10 p11 1

2 01 Why? Why is boosting the use of social media important? To answer this question you need to consider your business strategy then align your social media objectives. For instance, if your business model is to generate revenue through the sale of exhibition space at trade shows, then your social media objectives might be to: Promote exhibitors Strengthen brand awareness Encourage registrations Drive more web traffic Social media has become a key component when creating the marketing mix for an event. Outwardly, it often appears like an afterthought. Social media doesn t get a lot of budget devoted to it, largely due to being mis-represented as a free marketing tool. This couldn t be further from the truth. When marketing your event, the analogy we use posits that you should look to bake in social media, rather than sprinkle it on last minute. But what does this actually mean? Simply put, you need to devote resource and time before, during and after to ensure the experience is seamless. Events are inherently social and this should be reflected online as well as on site. Doing this well will create an atmosphere of discussion and engagement and help achieve your social media objectives. 2

3 02 Start with Analytics Every channel has metrics that should be recorded in the best way possible. Everytime you try out a new method or message, check your stats and annotate them. It s important you can show which action caused a change in, for example, event sign ups, sales, or repeat customers. Repeated success lies in identifying causation. Marketing is primarily a science, not an art - but it s important to consider the effect on your brand reputation with each change, as well as the emotional response it will trigger from your audience. This can be harder to monitor with numbers alone, so take the time to look carefully through the content your audience posts at your event - you ll get a strong sense of what mattered most, especially with photos taken. There is an abundance of analytics tools on the market to help give you great insights. Some you might consider include: Tweet reach Topsy Hootsuite Google Analytics We ve seen many organisers use a mix of social media platforms to promote their event. Newer platforms like Pinterest and Vine are providing opportunities to creatively promote key aspects of an event. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn currently dominate as hosts to the largest numbers of users. It s crucial not to spread yourself too thinly, and instead focus on distributing content where it s going to have the greatest impact. Don t be afraid to run a quick survey asking people how they d prefer to receive updates and promotions. 3

4 03 Before the Event When creating the marketing plan for your event, there is plenty to consider. Paid advertising, PR, shots and newsletters, direct mail, cold calling, partnerships and sponsorships... the list goes on. Social media offers the chance to not only advertise, but to also start engaging with your attendees. Unlike traditional advertising, social media enables you to listen and gather useful information: What excites your attendees? Which topics or brands are they asking about? What are their goals for the event? If they attended before, what would they like to see different? Create a hashtag that s unique, easy to remember, easy to type and as short as possible. and SMS were built around a model of one-to-one communication whilst social media platforms are built for one-to-many broadcasts. There s huge scope for reaching more people with similar interests to those you re already inviting, without directly asking them to share your event information. Twitter offers the best feature set of any social media platform for use during events. To drive its use, you ll need to promote this beforehand. Create a hashtag that s unique, easy to remember, easy to type and as short as possible - ideally featuring your brand name. Remember that a hashtag can be used by anyone so always check it s not used for something else already. Ensure that it s placed alongside the registration link in all marketing collateral and pre-event promotion. 4

5 04 During the Event There are several activities that can be run during an event that bring the online and on-site experience together. Twitter is our platform of choice, but on occasion it s not appropriate to publicly share all the information from an event. In those cases, we encourage the use of SMS to meet similar objectives. An added advantage of using SMS is that the audience can choose to post anonymously, lowering inhibitions for those contributing. Brand activation The objective is to have the visitors interacting with the brand, contributing content to a specific hashtag. In this example, we use a competition mechanism that is structured in the following way: Promote Twitter and Instagram Collateral handed to visitors Banners and posters on site Website Seed Have team post 5 entries from personal Twitter and Instagram accounts Retweet via official accounts Engage Reply to each entrant thanking them Retweet any really creative entries Hype Promote the competition periodically via social media and on ThinkWall Announce a time remaining countdown on ThinkWall and via social media Close Give a final countdown on ThinkWall and via social media Announce the winner on ThinkWall and as on Twitter to that person Host a prize ceremony, with photo opportunity featuring the team Wrap up blog post with top 10 photos and congratulations to the winner 5

6 Competition example The ThinkWall team coordinated efforts with a trade show organiser (our client) and an exhibitor who wished to give away one of their products as promotion. ThinkWall displayed adverts to drive visitors to the exhibitors stand. Periodically an announcement was scheduled for full screen display on each ThinkWall positioned around the venue, promoting the competition and giving updates. Specific social media content was frozen on screen to highlight some of the favourite entries, and the engagement from the organiser and exhibitor. Here are some example tweets: Pure Did you know that you can win a unique prize just by RT #Pure34 tweets? The winner wil collect their prize on #MRJ_style on Tue. Pure Our RT competition is at #Pure34 on stand T270, the prize is courtesy pic.twitter.com/rstc8u6aic Pure The winner of #Pure34 RT competition is #essexsparkle! Please take a picture of our badge & share! See you stand T270 at 02:30. What a lovely visit! The bag looks smashing on you darling! pictwitter.com/ mhokayxstq 6

7 05 Q&A Taking questions from the audience has traditionally been a logistical challenge for an on-site team. Getting a microphone to someone takes time and with an unknown audience, there is a degree of risk that an inappropriate question will be asked. Technology can help here. Many suppliers provide tablets and handset devices for the submission and moderation of questions. But these can be costly and require considerable on-site technical support. Why not have your audience use their smartphones instead? Questions can be submitted via SMS and/or Twitter for you to review using ThinkWall s moderation inbox. Display your chosen questions on a large screen where you can freeze them individually to highlight which is being asked at that time. Here s an example from our work with NABS, An Audience with Lord Sugar: 7

8 06 Feedback Gathering audience feedback is crucial. Using Twitter it s possible to get a snapshot of what s been popular in a variety of media formats - text, image and video. By moderating the feedback appearing on a ThinkWall we can nurture a positive tone during the event. This helps to promote your brand and potentially encourages new registrations to your next event. Negative feedback is still visible for all to see on Twitter, so quickly reacting and ideally solving the problem can turn a negative into a positive. In contrast, this example uses SMS instead of Twitter to gather anonymous feedback away from the public eye. We deployed this at an internal event for the healthcare company, Care UK: 8

9 07 Networking Running a tweet meet area at a conference can provide a great opportunity to your attendees for organising quick meetings. Visitors can arrange a time to be at the tweet meet area, grab a coffee, exchange contact details and see what everyone is saying about the event in real time. Here you see a sponsored tweet meet area at the Great British Business Show. 9

10 08 After the event Sales people follow the mantra always be closing, and that s a pretty decent approach to take with post-event social media engagement. Follow up! Thank people for attending, thank your sponsors, exhibitors, partners, speakers, and thank your team. If you are able to share a registration link for your next event, make the best use of the enthusiasm while it s still alive. Encourage everyone to share their experiences with friends and colleagues. The key is to keep momentum going for as long as possible after the event. Give credit to content creators whenever possible. Keep pushing out content with the event hashtag - perhaps your professional photos, a video showreel, or the slide deck from the keynote speech. Any content that was produced and published by your visitors, or indeed anyone outside your organising team, should be attributed. It s important that you give credit to content creators whenever possible. Thank them for their contributions by resharing or commenting on the content. From here, you can start to talk about the next event. Subtly (or not so) drop in references to the hashtag that you plan to use next time. Reporting is an essential exercise - whether that be internally to management, or in the public domain through your website or blog. Check all the analytics established prior to your event, comparing how well engagement on each platform translated to your sales figures or event registrations. Also take the time to review any responses to your content - particularly how this reflects on its quality. 10

11 09 What next? The team at ThinkWall works tirelessly for brands around the world. This guide has presented some examples that are easily adapted for use at most events. If you d like to discuss implementing any of these, or hearing more from our creative team about other ideas, then get in touch! creative@thinkwall.com More than just a Twitter wall 11