4. What We’ve Done for Sage Sage Summit 2010 Virtual Event (November) Sage Summit 2011 Social Media Plan (January) Social Media Maintenance (January – July) On-site Social Media Architect (July)
14. #1 – Promote Your Social Presence Decide which sites to use Display chiclets, share, like Social media account matrix (by business unit) Take advantage of employee’s klout Weave your social web Build it and they will come
15. #1 – Frequency 2-3 months before show: weekly 1 month before show: daily Live show: hourly Live sessions: minute by minute 1 week after show: daily
16. #1 – Best Practices Comfortable frequency Listen first, post later Stay on topic Stay in character Remain tolerable by providing value
19. #2 – Claim an Official Twitter Hashtag #SageSummit Helps to organize information and people Short, simple, intuitive Check for use Own it
20. #2 – Best Practices CamelCase your hashtag Put it on everything you print Remind attendees constantly Don’t abuse (dilute) it Monitor hashtag Follow active tweeps
23. #3 – Create Social Event Invites Linkedin, Facebook, YouTube, Lanyrd, Plancast Date, time, location, registration link Social sharing, subscribe to friends, influence registrations
26. #4 – Stimulate User Generated Content Youtube, Flickr, Twitpic, Facebook, Tweetcasting Second degree of separation, further reach Brand advocate/employee generated content, boost Retweet/promote the best stuff Reward participation
32. Feedback Download this deck on slideshare Follow me @gregjonesonlinefor questions Subscribe to our blog aWiderNet for more ideas Find me at Sage Summit 2011
Thank you for having me,Kelly QuinlanGreg TiricoSuzanne Spear
Again, my name is Greg Jones, I’m a solutions analyst for Cramer –and I’m fortunate enough to spend my time surfing the web and tinkering with the latest technologies to keep my company on the cutting edge of digital marketing.You can find me online at about.me/gregjonesonline – if you haven’t heard of about.me, go check it out and claim your url before someone else gets it! It’s a trendy way to display your social self all in one place – you can upload an image, add and format text, link to all of your social profiles online, and you only need to give people one link to find you. I also blog for my company, I typically write about the latest and greatest in mobile, social, design and technology. You can check that out at awidernet.com…
I work for Cramer, which is a digital marketing and event solutions company located in norwood, ma.We are in the unique position of having in depth knowledge of online marketing as well as event production, which puts us in a great spot to provide support across both disciplines.
So with that, I’d like to give you a little background on what we’ve done for Sage and where we are headed with Suzanne and Sage Summit.On November 18, 2010 Cramer helped close Sage Summit’s event gap by bringing customers into a virtual event environment to hear 90 second pitches from product managers on potential topics for Sage Summit 2011, the audience was polled on which topics and sessions they wanted to hear about most at Sage Summit 2011. Hopefully some of you were able to attend the virtual event while it was live… The virtual event had a great turnout, we got a lot of good feedback from customers and partners, and most importantly, the insight gained will be a major influence on Sage Summit 2011.More recently, we have started to build out Sage Summit’s social media presence by starting with a social media plan in january, which we are now in the process of implementing by scheduling posts, performing social media moderation, and content production. In July, I’ll be at Sage Summit 2011 in Washington D.C. with a laptop in one hand, and a cameraphone in my other hand to document and upload Sage Summit in real time. If you are attending I encourage you to come find me!
This is a sample social media calendar which helps to outline the frequency and types of content that should be produced before, during and after an event. Not all calendars will look alike, but something like this may be useful during the early stages of planning an editorial calendar.
Here are a few campaign ideas we presented to Suzanne for Sage Summit.Social media campaigns are a great way to command your social audience, rapidly grow your following, and form an exciting relationship between yourself and your brand advocates.Ifyou’d like additional information on these ideas or other campaign ideas, feel free to reach out to me and I’d be glad to share more with you…
So, for this presentationwe heard from Kelly Quinlan and Greg Tirico that you were interested in learning about how to use social media at events – so that’s exactly what I will be covering with the remainder of my time,But first…
I have a few questions for you –If you ask yourself thesethree questions, it will make it much easier to engage in the right social media activities for your business unit.
First, Who am I? – as a company – who are you online? – what is your voice, what is your personality, are you an entity or an individual? who are you speaking to?, who is speaking about you? What are they saying? Are you listening? Are you adapting?Social media is always a two way communication, it isn’t about broadcasting. It isn’t enough to post a video if you never respond to comments, it isn’t enough to tweet headlines and special offers if you don’t follow people and respond to what they are saying about you.Lots of companies have rolled out social media policies or guidelines for employees, and social media/public relations departments are starting to spring up because customers are taking their praise as well as their grievances to a very public place where everyone is equal. People want to interact with other people, so talk like a person while also talking about your company.Who am i?This first question should be answered by your business unit as a whole – what is your persona as a company, and how do you let it show online?
Second, what is my business challenge?In order to select the right social media solution you first need to identify the problem.Are you having trouble with: Attendance? Pricing? Audience interaction? Holding your audience’s attention? Networking? Each event is different, each audience is different, but if you know your pain points it is much easier to develop a cocktail of social media solutions specific to your challenge, so keep your challenges in mind as we walk through the rest of this presentation.
Third, who wants to be my friend…? It might sound like a silly questions, butBrands who are just starting social media efforts often appear desperate for an audience –My advice, be yourself, take it slow, let your audience grow organically… letting the right people find you over time is often much more effective than convincing the wrong people to be your friend.So, with those three questions in mind, and without further delay,
I present, the top five ways to integrate social media into an event!
Number one, promote your social presence.This one might sound like a no-brainer, but it is extremely important to make your social presence known if you are going to spend time and money in a social channel…
By now, businesses have for the most part decided which social media sites they want to be a part of.Make sure to stick with those sites for the long run, don’t create a youtubechanel specific to one marketing campaign, because if you abandon it, it looks worse than not having it in the first place. Don’t throw away your fans when you are done with them, they will resent it.Display Chiclets on your sites and integrate “share” and “like” functionality as a way of socially enabling your contentDevelop a social media account matrix by business unit to give coworkers a cheat sheet to cross promote sites and content at the business unit level. (sage has a lot of business units which should be playing off one another daily)Take advantage of coworkers Klout (which is to say, their social influence) to help spread your message, especially if their friends/followers represent a segment of your audience.
Once you have started promoting your social presence, it is important to develop a frequency to your communications,the frequency of your communications will change based on your event timeline, but in general, communications will start off slow, peak during live sessions, and fall post-event. Social media channels shouldn’t be abandoned after a show, but it is perfectly natural for the frequency of communication to drop significantly until the next event is on the horizon. If a channel is completely abandoned you may lose fans/followers due to inactivity. You don’t stop answering your phone after an event is over, neither should you stop answering your social messages.Each social media channel has it’s own expectations when it comes to frequency, so to build and sustain a following, on average:twitter posts,direct messages, andmentions should be handled daily | Facebookposts should be done weekly, but reply to comments daily |Blogging should be done weekly | YouTube video uploads weekly, but reply to comments daily | Flickrpicture uploads twice-monthly, or whenever subject matter arises | and LinkedIn groups and conversations should be done weekly.
Best practices: comfortable frequency – like I said, don’t over deliver or under deliver your audience with updates, when you enter live sessions and expect a lot of tweets back to back, be sure the first one let’s people know what you are talking about – an example might be: “#sagesummit general session with @speakername is about to start!” – it will help your followers understand why they are getting assaulted by tweets.listen first, post later – don’t bore your audience, make sure to talk about what they are interested in,stay on topic – don’t confuse your audience, by covering completely unrelated materialstay in character – allow your audience to become comfortable with you, and Remain tolerable by providing value – brands must find a balance between marketing campaign spam (1 way communication) and genuine conversation and sharing, (2 way communication), if you sway too far into the broadcast channel your audience will be turned off. Vary the types of content you post and the places you link to – send a tweet, send a photo, reference a link or a RT, quote a speaker – this is especially true during live sessions when the frequency of posts is accelerated.
Here is an example from CES, the Consumer electronics show, each chiclet takes you to the social site you would expect, but imagine trying to find all of those links on your own…
Number two, claim an official twitter hashtag
Hashtags are used to help organize information and people on twitter, I’m sure you all know what they are and use them everyday, but they are particularly important for organizing communications at events.Brainstorm a list of possible hashtags to use for your event, keep them short, simple and intuitive, make sure it isn’t already in use by someone else by doing a twitter search, and then start using it.Focus on your update firstand thenadd hashtagsafterward if it makes sense,No one regulates or moderates hashtags, it’s kind of a free for all,so find something that makes sense for you, isn’t in use, and start using it.
Some best practices around hashtags:CamelCaseyour hashtag to maintain legibility, remind attendees of the hashtag constantly, put it on everything you print (especially PPTs)Monitor your hashtag, especially during live sessions, set up social media monitoring tools such as google alerts or hootsuite searches as a long term solution to track your mentionsIf you are trying to build a following on twitter, one of the best ways to do it is by following active tweeps during live sessions and throughout the live event.
An example of a hashtag in use by macworld expo,Some prefer to attach a year to an event hashtag, which you may or may not find helpful, personally I think it just adds to the length of your hashtag, and you only have 140 characters to work with.
Number three, create social event invites
There are a bunch of different places online to host your event details, your website and registration page being the first, but others include:Linkedin– professionals/partnersFacebook – consumers/brand advocatesYouTube – consumer/brand advocatesLanyrd – (twitter) only conferencesPlancast – (facebook, twitter) all event typesAll of these options help spread your event date, time, location, and registration link, they allow people to rsvp, socially share, subscribe to friend’s event activityhttp://www.eventmanagerblog.com/event-technology/plancast-lanyrd-comparison
Here is an example from South by South West, the music and film festival coming up shortly. Over 500 people have rsvp’d on linkedin alone,These pages are often on the first page of google for seo, andSpeakers and exhibitors should all confirm they will be at the event for greatest impact.
Number four, stimulateuser generated content, and if you watched the superbowl, this image will probably live with you forever. A creative director didn’t come up with it, a fan did.
User generated content can be produced for the people, by the people, on sites like youtube, flickr, twitpic, facebook, and twitter.Encourage the practice of user generated content and you may find your audience having the greatest impact on your event’s publicity.And as always, find ways to reward participation
A great example of this is apple’s first ipad announcement, journalists and bloggers alike were invited, Because engadget did a live blog of the event, it was seen by many more people than if apple announced it on apple.com
Number five, install display technologiesPlasma screens and projectors are all over the place at events.Try turning one into a talking point by feeding your screen with social media content.
Some options we have used in the past include Wiffiti and Aerva.They allow for text to screen and tweet to screen and provide moderation tools for posts
A quick example is a sagesummitwiffiti board that I created a few weeks ago.I selected my keywords, uploaded a background image, and it did the rest!So, with that,
that wraps up the top five ways to integrate social media into an event, I’ll open up the line now for the remainder of the time for any questions…
