Integrating Social Media into Event Strategies

Social media communication tools are proving to be a valuable resource for successful event marketing—they create buzz, increase attendance and foster interaction long after the actual event. While event marketing focuses on the face-to-face experience of attending, sponsoring and speaking at trade shows or industry meet-ups, social media facilitates shared experiences and creates brand advocates on a much larger scale.

Integrating social media into event strategies allows audiences to contribute to event content, promote the event to their friends, share the event experience through images and conversations, evaluate the event in real time, and extend the post-event experience.

When using social media to achieve these goals, you should consider the three phases of event marketing. Here are some recommendations for each aspect of your event.

Before the event

Consider surveying your members or past attenders to ask them which social media platforms they use. Build your communities where you have the largest participation and cross-promote the event on all channels.

Make sure your customers are aware of your social networking initiatives by placing social media or video menus in a prominent place on your company web site. Create a page that lists all the event speakers, with their Twitter handles. Consider creating a Twitter list of all event speakers to promote the event. A Twitter list is a newer function of Twitter that allows a user to group together and name a list of favorite or industry-related users. The lists are given their own distinct URL, which can then be promoted and followed. There are even sites such as Listorious which allow you to publicize and promote your Twitter lists and gain followers.

As an event organizer, a Twitter list of all keynote speakers would allow you to easily track their updates and retweet to help promote your speakers to your followers and build an event community. You can also import your lists to Facebook and have those updates automatically feed into your fan page. You should also create and promote your event hashtag. Effectively using hashtags enables tweets about your conference or event to be organized and searched.

During the event

When recently asked for his best tip in using social media for events, Jason Falls, well-known social media consultant and founder of Social Media Explorer, advised, "Stop thinking about events as a push (awareness) tactic and find ways to let attendees tell the story before, during and after." Social media is about putting control of the message in the user's hands.

Social media allows event attenders and those who are unable to be there in person to engage using micro-blogging sites like Twitter. Be sure to use the event hashtag in all tweets. Consider providing real-time footage of the event on Ustream, an interactive platform that allows anyone to broadcast videos through its web site.

Media companies often set up official tweeters and create Facebook pages for big events to foster dialogue about the event. NBC, for example, created an Olympics "Twitter Tracker" to help viewers see the trends on Olympic-related twittering.

Provide a special area during events for bloggers, videocasters and podcasters, and allow them to use PR facilities to interview speakers and attenders. Ask attenders to post to your photo galleries, either on your site or on public forums like Flickr. Provide Wi-Fi and public computers at your event to aid this process.

After the event

Just because the event is over does not mean the conversation is. A well-written and opinionated post by one of the event organizers on your event's blog can move the post-event conversation to your web site. For example, if you take a look at the 2010 SXSW Interactive Festival web site you'll see the recaps and reviews. Here is a good example of how SXSW organizers let their audience know why to keep coming back after the event:

"Now that the SXSW Interactive Festival has come to a close, you may be wondering where you can go to catch up with sessions you may have missed, relive talks you want to experience again, or, if you didn't make it out to SXSW this year, get a glimpse of the 2010 event."

Along with visitors, those who were not able to attend will want to read reviews, view photos and videocasts, and listen to podcasts from the event. Use the content to help build a house file for future events.

Continue to engage visitors on social media platforms. Comment on and retweet any blog posts or updates from vistors. Begin planning your next event by speaking to potential presenters, exhibitors and attenders while the iron is still hot.

Your events are catalysts for relationships. The roots of social media marketing are not found in technology, but in the relationships you develop within your community through collaborative conversations live and online. Nurture your community with events.

Measuring event ROI

According to a 2009 survey of 555 professionals in a variety of industries worldwide by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education, 84 percent of survey respondents who have adopted social media indicated that they do not measure their social media programs. Forty percent were not even sure they could monitor social media ROI.

Fortunately, there are a host of free or low-cost tools available to help companies and organizations track the social media effectiveness of their event marketing strategies. A few choices include Trackur, PostRank, Google Alerts, Social Mention

Your event community should be the communication hub before, during and after your event. You want conversations to flow between visitors sharing ideas, networking with other visitorsand discussing trends. The long-term effect will be a viral event community that continues to grow year after year.

25 Ways To Use Social Media For Your Next Event

1. Identify a hashtag for your conference.
A hashtag is a key word or abbreviation preceded by the hash or number symbol such as #EC10. Hashtags are adopted by event organizers to encourage conference participants to use in their tweets. Hashtags were created as a way to search and aggregate information on Twitter. More information on hashtags. 

2. Search to see if anyone else is using your hashtag using one of the tools listed below.
If not, list it with these same tools. There is not an official hashtag registration system. 

Tagalus – a user-defined dictionary of hashtags.
Define your hashtag by tweeting @Tagalus Define (list your hashtag) as: (definition of hashtag)

Example :

• @Tagalus Define #EC10 as EventCamp 2010, an unconference for event professionals.
  
• Response : @Twitteruser http://tagal.us/tag/EC10
  

Ask Tagalus if a hashtag is currently defined or being used. 

Example : 

• @Tagalus Define #EC10
  
• Response: @Twitteruser EC10 = EventCamp 2010, an unconference for event professionals according to CC 
  

Twubs – uses a wiki system to disseminate information on a hashtag. It has a special conference solution that creates a conference hub of all things related to your event: content tags, members and contributors, photos, related websites, RSS feeds, Tweetups and event schedules, and videos.

 It is currently free while in Beta. 

What The Hashtag – a user-editable encyclopedia for hashtags found on Twitter. Sign up for an account and register a hashtag. WTHashtag provides great analytics to track the past seven days' use of hashtag, top contributors, number of RTs, percentage of tweets from top contributors, etc. Users can also print a transcript of tweets mentioning a hashtag from a specific time period. Great for note taking. 

3. Use the same abbreviation and hash symbol for Flickr photos and YouTube videos.
Ask attendees to tag their personal photos and videos and upload them to your Flickr and YouTube conference pages. 

 4. Promote the Twitter hashtag and Flickr, YouTube tags early and often.
Include it on all marketing material and event communications. 

5. Create a YouTube Conference page for videos created by staff and attendees.
Market early and often. 

6. Hold pre-conference social media contests and provide free registration, lodging and travel to winners.
Ask potential attendees to write a blog post, tweet a special code and or create a YouTube videos on why they want to attend the event.   

7. Create a Facebook Conference Page.
Tips for creating a great conference Facebook page. The difference between Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages for your nonprofit or conference. 12 Steps To Creating A Bootylicious Facebook Page. 

8. Create special short videos about conference speaker and location and upload to your conference YouTube page.
Embed these videos on your Facebook Conference Page, your conference Website and distribute via your email and social media marketing pages. Use Animoto to create slick videos using pictures and text. 

9. Create short, simple, YouTube videos explaining how to use Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and your conference eCommunity for your conference and event.  

10. Create a Twitter list of all your conference speakers that attendees can follow.
How to use and create Twitter lists post by Mashable. 

11. Provide a website widget of the Twitter hashtag that users can post on blogs, personal pages and websites.
Make a widget using TwitterFall, TwitterFountain, TweetGrid
or
Widgetbox.  

12. Create a conference speaker hub that aggregates RSS feeds of each speaker's blog posts.
Many conference eCommunitites solutions have this feature built into their program for your conference Twitter feed, Facebook page and blog posts. If you are not using a conference eCommunity, consider iGoogle, Netvibes, Nomee, Pagecasts (a public version of Pageflakes), Twubs, Wakooz or other aggregator. 

13. Create a conference hub that aggregates all online information about your conference including a Twitter hashtag, Facebook page, conference and speaker blog posts, Flickr tagged photos, YouTube conference video page and more. Twubs provides a great conference solution for this or use one of the free features like iGoogle, Netvibes, Nomee, Pagecasts (a public version of Pageflakes), Wakooz or other aggregator. 

14. Create a LinkedIn Event and invite people to link it to their LinkedIn profile.
How to use LinkedIn Events. 

15. Create a Facebook Event to invite your organization page followers 

16. Create several conference badges that are hyperlinked to the conference website.
Badges can be placed on personal Facebook profiles and blogs. Badges can say things like I'm attending event x or I'm speaking at event x. 

17. Use a conference eCommunity.

18. Set Google and Twitter alerts for the conference hashtag and name..  

19. Secure part of the general session room for a bloggers and Twitter hub.

20. Invite specific industry influential bloggers to attend and provide free registration to them.
Contract with them to provide live blogging and tweeting in exchange for free conference registration. 

21. Create a daily electronic conference paper using Twitter hashtag at http://paper.li/.
Promote the paper daily via email, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. 

22. Create a Conference Slideshare page and post speaker PPTs there.  

23. When booking speakers, include a pre-conference Webinar, blog post, eNews article, Blogtalk Radio interview along with the face-to-face presentation in their contract.
This will extend the conference learning experience as well as market content and speakers to potential attendees. 

24. Make the conference a hybrid event and live stream general sessions to those who could not attend the face-to-face experience. 

25. Use social media press releases.
Tips on creating social media press release. 

How to Measure Social Media Marketing Performance

1: Define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Measure Against Them

In order to hold any marketing channel accountable,
there first must be a framework of metrics that can be tracked, compared to a benchmark (industry or prior program performance) and analyzed over time.  Social channels are no different.  When looking to assign accountability to social programs, the first step is to define KPIs and measure against them.  The three key components to track are:

Expanded Reach to New Audiences

Reach refers to the additional impressions that social channels provide to a program.  Reach addresses the first value of social media marketing: tapping into the power of the social web to engage previously unreachable prospects to your brand message.  In addition, reach through social channels increases a brand's credibility as new consumers touched by social programs are being introduced by their peers or other respected "voices" on the social web. For example, the impact of a consumer seeing a friend recommend a brand as a result of a social program is much greater than seeing a static ad from the brand.

Influencer Sharing Behavior

Influencers (a.k.a. customers advocating for your brand) are essential to maximizing the viral impact of your social media programs. In order to leverage them properly, you need to determine the level of engagement between an influencer and the members of their social graph.

All influencers are not created equal. Some are exceptional at sharing a message but offer little in the way of engagement with their peers. Others generate little groundswell or buzz, but the peers they do touch take their advice.  Understanding who your influencers are within your customer base and tracking their sharing behavior are critical to optimizing program performance.

With the rise of social media, consumers are increasingly relying on user-generated content for purchase decisions.

Conversions and Monetization

Every social programme must be associated with a call to action. Subscriptions to email lists, product purchases, signing up as a Facebook fan or downloading a free trial are all examples of calls to action.  In order to measure monetary contribution to business goals, the marketer must assign value to the social program's call to action and then track the conversions.  Too often, social purists take a passive approach to program execution. The call to action need not be a sale. In fact, it could be motivating users to generate content to be added to a brand's online community.  The point here is that a defensible value for the action must be defined and tracked.

The combination of these three KPIs (reach, sharing behavior and monetization) provides clear program success criteria and can be weighted based on a program's objectives.  In the case of an awareness campaign, a marketer may place more weight on reach and sharing activity.  In the case of a direct response program, the opposite weighting could be applied.

2: Create Predictable Results With Targeting

When looking at potential advocates to share a brand message on the social web, the number of friends one has on Facebook or the number of followers one has on Twitter is important, but it's not the most important factor.  The real key to driving a predictable programme is targeting.

Too often, social media programs start on the social web (where customer-specific data is scarce) and not within the CRM databases that companies have developed to provide deeper insight into their customers.   Accountable marketing programs need to be predictable, and predictability can only be driven on the social web once a brand identifies its most engaged customers and who among those are willing to advocate on its behalf.

As I mentioned before, marketers need to understand that all customers are not created equal on the social web, and the number of fans and followers the brand has is not the critical data point. It's how customers feel about the brand and the relative propensity they have to share POSITIVE sentiment with their social graph.  Under the current system without proper social media targeting, Toyota is likely to ask my neighbor to advocate for the brand, who bought his first Camry last year and would love a reason to share his negative sentiment with his over 2,600 followers on Twitter and 700 friends on Facebook.

3: Foster Viral Sharing With Incentives

Social media purists – take a deep breath before reading on.  Social media marketing is subject to the same rules and limitations as other marketing programs.  Specifically, there's no way social media can become an accountable channel if it's reliant on "lighting in a bottle" –type programs.  Viral activity from a set of advocates needs to be predictable. Equally important, marketers must be able to influence the social participation in their programs.  Incentivized sharing provides this level of predictability as well as an opportunity to throttle activity.

Rewarding customers for behavior, once again, is not a new concept. Why not apply that same logic to advocacy on the social web?  Marketers need to build bi-directional incentives into social programs. This means they reward the influencer for inviting friends to participate in a brand's program and then reward the influencer's friends for acting on the viral invitation.

In other words, both the brand advocate and the advocate's friend are treated like VIPs for engaging with the brand via the social web.  Programs that include these bi-directional incentives perform two times better than those that rely solely on altruistic motivation for sharing activity. As long as marketers are transparent about the incentivized offers, the integrity of the channel is maintained while the marketer can access a dial to turn KPIs like reach, sharing behavior and monetization up or down.

There's been real innovation in the last year around social media marketing and many leading brands have taken advantage of the wave.  In order for it to continue, marketers must introduce a program-level discipline to their social marketing efforts. The concepts above are a great place to start. Define KPIs and track at the individual and program level over time, target social programs at your most engaged customers and introduce incentives for social sharing activity.

9 Anti-Social Behaviours

Here are nine anti-social behaviours

1. Don't Listen or Observe. Who really cares what others have to say anyway? It's often uninteresting and usually downright boring. Understanding what your audience has to say is overrated at best. They're all selfish, and most of them talk about themselves, adding no value to the community at all. What's that? they're talking about you or your event? It doesn't matter what they have to say anyway. What can you learn about the perspective, thoughts, ideas and opinions of others? It's your event. If they knew any better than you about the subject matter, they'd create their own event. After all, you're the expert.

2. Participate in Only One Social Network. I've been a big fan of my early 90's bulletin board service since it launched. I'm now the only person left and I love the solitude. You may have heard there are other networks out there like AOL, but that would mean more people reading your posts and trying to interact with you. Once you find a good social network for your event, stick with it. There are some who would tell you to "fish where the fish are" but it's not about others. It's about where you want to talk about your event. Who has the time to participate in multiple social channels anyway?

3. Don't Share. Got some great pictures of the skydivers you hired to promote your event? Did you take a video of an amazing keynote presentation? These are highly-personal things and are not intended to be shared. Go out and purchase a fire-proof vault to lock these assets up in for you to cherish year-after-year. No one is interested in reliving the memories of your experience or seeing what's happening at your event. Keep them to yourself. If you should come across something that's relevant or interesting to your audience that may have been authored by someone else, do not share it.

4. Use the Default Picture. There is no reason for anyone to see what you look like, or see a logo for your event. The Oo that comes with Tweeter, or the shaded blue silhouette avatar that's the default on iSpace or FacePage is perfectly fine. If you absolutely must have a picture, make sure its obscured or misrepresents you in some way. If you don't have photo-editing software, try contorting your face so you hide your chin with you hands of stretch out your neck by turning to the side. and never, ever look directly at the camera. This will ensure others on social networks will not recognize you at your event or on the street. This is a great strategy for retaining anonymity.

5. Always Talk About Yourself. The best way to alienate others and ensure you don't get any followers or friends is to talk about yourself. All. The. Time. Again, it's not about others. It's about your event. What you have to say is way more important that what others have to say. Be especially careful not to fall into the trap of talking about others at your event, e.g., keynote speakers, exhibitors, discussion leaders or attendees. Also, there may be other events or things going on in your industry that have similar or complementary subject matter. Ignore them. Do not cross-promote. Do not mention them. Do not ask them to mention your event.

6. Try to Be Someone Else. Adopt someone else's personality where ever possible. Or better yet, make up a personality and change it up every so often to keep your audience guessing. Mixing your tone and voice for each and every touch point will confuse your audiences and ensure your brand intent is kept secret. No one will know who you are, what you're about or what you represent.

7. Keep the Community Closed. "The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club." Treat your event the same way. You may find that others want to talk to each other about your event. They may even want to share thoughts, photos, videos, literature, etc. Do everything possible to discourage this. Do not set up proprietary or participate in third-party social networks. Make sure any materials you create for your events are hard copy only, or better yet, print content on large signs located in uncomfortable locations to make it difficult for attendees to capture and share it with others. If you discover your content being shared on other social networks, do your best to shut it down. Send form letters threatening legal action to anyone posting anything about your event.

8. Do Not Engage. Audiences and communities are sneaky. They will do everything possible to start a conversation with you. Be careful here. They may ask baited questions, comment on your event or even complement the event. Do not under any circumstances fall for these ploys. It's important to ignore all requests for engagement or interaction of any kind. The best way to be a part of the conversation is to not participate at all.

9. Collect all Cameras, Computers and Mobile Devices at the Door. What better way to discourage social interaction than removing the tools used for interaction from attendees? It's also a good idea to simply collect these devices in large bins without any organisational system whatsoever. When audiences arrive at your event. Prohibit any electronic device from entering the exhibit hall or any speaking sessions. If attendees insist on taking notes, distribute small chalkboards with small pieces of chalk. Require all boards to be erased and returned before the event ends.

Sarcasm is often difficult to express in writing. In all seriousness, I recommend you do exactly the opposite of the above. I hope you've enjoyed this view of anti-social behaviours. If you have other anti-social behaviours you'd like to add, please comment below!