How to engage in Social mobile!

SOCIAL MEDIA PLAYBOOK
A guide to a winning strategy using social media

Table of Contents

Social Media Playbook

01

Social media is more than just marketing. It can also create better engagement at an event, help attendees network, set up meetings in advance, deliver content recommendations from other registrants – and so much more.
> The purpose of this Playbook is to help you put together a social media strategy that best fits your business goals and objectives.

2 3 9 16 21 25 29 32 35 38 40 41 43 44

Introduction Diagraming Your Social Media Strategy Your Facebook Play Your Twitter Play Your LinkedIn Play Your YouTube Play Your Blogging Play Your Google+ Play Your Pinterest Play The “Other” Social Media Platforms How To Measure Your Results Analyzing Your Plays Social Media Terminology Conclusion

THINK ABOUT THIS:
Look for this symbol.
This directive icon is used throughout this Playbook to point out helpful tips and other important information.

Introduction

Social Media Playbook

02

“The goal isn’t to be good at social media. The goal is to be good at business because of social media.”
JAY BAER, SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIST AND AUTHOR

It’s time to recognize social media for what it is – a tool.
Not unlike a phone or a computer or a website. It’s simply a means to an end. And just as you wouldn’t try to run your organization or event without a computer, neither should you run it without social media. We integrated websites into our businesses in the 90s, and we’re integrating social into our businesses today. It’s as simple as that. But for many, it’s really not that simple. Maybe you’re the one who’s stretched too thin across too many platforms, wondering if your time is well-spent. Or you’re overwhelmed with the hundreds of platforms and have barely gotten started. Perhaps you’re happy with your social position, but can’t figure out if it’s moving your business forward. We can help. With this Playbook, we’d like to help you review (and perhaps retool) your social strategy, find the platforms best for your organization and event and learn how others are implementing social into their events. For those with a successful social presence, we’ll present advanced concepts and best practices, and highlight how ACTIVE Network Business Solutions can help integrate social into all your activities. It’s important, as well, to look ahead. Many would agree that social initiatives will have a deeper penetration into your organization in the very near future. “People often use the general term ‘Social Media ’ to represent ‘Social Media Marketing,” but there is so much more to it than that,” says Justin Ramers, Director of Digital and Social Media for ACTIVE. “Social has a big place in marketing, to be sure, but it also is an important part of Customer Service, Research & Development, Sales and ultimately customer satisfaction. It can do more than just market your event.

THINK ABOUT THIS:
– Social is about the individual. Your attendee/customer is in the center with his/her interests. Your event becomes a part of the ongoing conversation between the brand and that individual.

– Social is about continued engagement, better understanding and better intelligence. – Social allows you to provide better value with more relevant and targeted content – which drives a more valued, deeper relationship with your attendees/customers.

“At its core, social is about building relationships with your customers and prospective customers.”

Diagraming Your Social Media Strategy

Social Media Playbook

03

Only 34% of companies surveyed felt their social strategy was connected to business outcomes. That leaves 66% active in social media without their efforts being grounded in business goals.
Altimeter Group’s March, 2013, Evolution of Social Business report

More than a century ago, Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker famously quipped, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

The same could be said today about the resources spent on social media – much of it is wasted. (And often, more than half.)
Like most, you’ve probably got a Facebook page, and maybe a Twitter account. Could be you’re part of a LinkedIn Group or have your own Pinterest Board. And maybe you’re feeling pretty good about your 3,000 “likes” and 500 followers. But what are you accomplishing with your likes? Have they converted to sales? How many from the LinkedIn group are registered for your event? Which of your followers are using their own networks to evangelize on your behalf? And, most importantly, do you even know how to find the answers to these questions?

The sad fact is most of us in the event industry are using social media without a strategy,
without goals and without measurement. Hence, wasting much of our time. Without a strategy, goals and well-planned tactics, you could be spending all your time on Twitter, while potential attendees are on Facebook – having a wonderful conversation with your competitor. “Social media is simply a tool to solve old business problems in new ways,” explains Justin Ramers, Director of Digital and Social Media for ACTIVE Network. “The tools themselves shouldn’t be the focus since they can change constantly. What’s important are the foundational strategies of your business and how you can leverage social media to achieve success.”

Diagraming Your Social Media Strategy

Social Media Playbook

04

STRATEGY TIP: KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE
Know your goals and identify them because different social media tools will work best for each one. Social starts with awareness, builds to trust, loyalty and, finally, conversions.
Business Goals:
Before you can write your social media strategy, you need a clear understanding of your business goals. What is your organization trying to accomplish this year? Are you launching a new product? Hoping to gain 20 percent more market share? Do you want your association to be seen as the education leader in your field? Maybe you want 500 new members/customers this year. These are the goals that will drive your social media strategy. And it’s important to identify them because different social media tools will work best for each one. It’s also essential to recognize that creating social strategies is about building long-term relationships with your customers. It’s a slower process than many in the C-suite recognize, and is unlike moving into new territories with new salespeople. Results will not be immediate. Social starts with awareness, builds to trust, loyalty and, finally, conversions.

Event Goals:
Though you certainly may have separate event goals – increase attendance by 10 percent, grow sponsor revenue 20 percent, etc. – your event goals should also tie to your organization’s business strategy. For instance, if your business goal is to get 500 new members/customers this year, what will you do at the event to help make that happen? And how can social media support you? Be aware, too, that social media is not just about marketing. You should also be using social media to improve the event experience for attendees. “That’s the biggest misnomer about social media – that it’s just for marketing,” says Ramers. “Yes, social media marketing is important, but social media can also create better engagement at the event itself. It can help attendees network, set up meetings in advance, deliver content recommendations based on what others like them have registered for – and so much more.” Customer service is another key social media function. It’s not uncommon for social-enabled events to get messages on various platforms about lost badges, cold conference rooms and agenda questions. And attendees expect immediate replies – and action.

Diagraming Your Social Media Strategy

Social Media Playbook

05

“Disney isn’t about movies, it’s about magic. Apple isn’t about technology, it’s about innovation. What are you about?”
JAY BAER

Social Media Strategy
Armed with business and event goals, you can now start to write your social media strategy – but keep your objectives realistic and measurable. And don’t bite off more than you can chew – one or two goals will do it. These are typical – and reasonable – types of goals organizations set for their companies and events:

Social Media Tactics
The most important thing to remember as you ramp up your social media efforts is that you’re trying to build relationships. You’re talking with people, not at them. Think ping pong, rather than archery.

– Establish the organization as a thought leader. – Establish the organization as an education leader. – Increase the organization’s (or event’s) visibility in search results. – Increase the number of new attendees. – Increase the return attendee rate. – Increase the spend of returning attendees. – Gather more information about attendees/customers – education needs, spending plans, etc. – Expand the reach of the event/organization through the advocacy of attendees/customers. – Expand awareness of the event to – and grow – niche audiences. – Build community. – Drive more traffic to specific parts of the event – or specific exhibitors. – Make the industry more aware of everything your organization offers. – Extend the reach of the conference to an at-home audience.

– Build your profile on your chosen platform. Use those keywords. – Make sure your social channels are integrated with your website. – Start following the people who are talking about your industry or product. – Start commenting on blogs, LinkedIn posts, Facebook, etc. Just add your two cents. – Start making posts of your own. Your voice should be authentic, transparent and engaging. Don’t push your goals too hard yet. You’re trying to build a following. – Share your content. Why hide it behind member only walls? Could it do more good shared? – Don’t over post –or under post. – If your platform supports it, schedule “chats” or start a discussion group. – Know when to get out of the way. If your audience wants to move a conversation in a specific direction, let them. – Always respond to negative comments. Tell us how you’re addressing the issue.

–

Think collaboration. What could your audience help with? Socializing topics or speakers for your event? Features for a new product? Social media is like having a free focus group.

– Help attendees engage. Launch a game. Introduce people. Connect exhibitors and speakers with attendees. – Make a point to meet your followers at industry events. Plan a “meet-up” for everyone. – Congratulations, you’ve started building a community.

Diagraming Your Social Media Strategy

Social Media Playbook

06

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH YOUR STRATEGY:

1
Identify your “one thing.”
Social media author, speaker and consultant, Jay Baer, says it doesn’t matter who you are, or what you sell, your product’s features and benefits aren’t enough to ignite passion in anyone other than you. He urges organizations to appeal to the heart of your audience, rather than the head. “Disney isn’t about movies, it’s about magic. Apple isn’t about technology, it’s about innovation. What are you about?”

2
Identify your audience.
What does your audience look like? Look at its sociographic, demographic and technographic make up. Where do they live socially?

3
Social Listening.
Find out what’s being said about your organization, event and industry. What are the hot topics? What are people fired up about? What types of things do they “share” or forward to others? Learn to use keyword research tools such as Google AdWords Keyword Tool, to identify the words and phrases people are using to find content in your industry – and on social channels. – Social listening will also tell you who the industry’s major social influencers are. Listen to what they say and consider involving them as speakers or advisors at your event.

4
Competitive Analysis.
It’s always a good idea to see what the competition is doing – even with social media. Does your competitor dominate a specific channel? Have they left the door wide open on another? Can you identify their “one thing?”

Diagraming Your Social Media Strategy

Social Media Playbook

07

BUSINESS GOALS

STRATEGY
BEFORE
TACTICS

EVENT GOALS
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
SOCIAL MEDIA TACTICS

METRICS & MEASURES

Making it Work
Be realistic, too, about your scheduling and resource management. Though having just one or two platforms to work on will help, there’s still more than one person should do. “Gone are the days when a social ‘person’ was hired to manage the social networking,” says Ramers. “Today, social media is a cross-functional team working from, and for, different parts of the organization.”

Measurement
Because you’ve set very specific social media goals, measuring your progress toward them will be easier.
But you’ll have to decide what to measure – what has value for you. For instance, the number of followers you have on any social platform isn’t really a good metric against a goal of increasing the number of new attendees at an event. For that, you’ll need to measure followers who converted to registrants. (We’ve got more on measurement in another chapter, too – including information on how ACTIVE can help!)

SO NOW WHAT?
Now that you know what you want to do and where your audience is, you can choose your platform. But again, be reasonable. Pick one or two, at most, and focus. “It’s easy to get overwhelmed,” says Ramers. “Especially with new platforms and tools coming online daily. But you have to think about your resources and stack rank your priorities. Bite off only what you can chew. Better to have a solid plan for two channels, than to work across all platforms with no strategy.”

Many of your efforts will likely be marketing – promoting your event or engaging with attendees before, during and after.
But associations should also include membership, education and event operations team members, while corporations should add customer service and ops, as well. Automation tools can help, too. Setting editorial calendars and programming your posts weeks in advance can put your social media on auto pilot. But you need to be nimble, as well – able to respond to changes and comments. (We have more on these tools in another chapter.)

REMEMBER:

Different channels are better suited to different purposes. Building loyalty, for instance, may work best on Facebook, while thought leadership is more aligned with LinkedIn.

Diagraming Your Social Media Strategy

Social Media Playbook

08

WHICH PLATFORM WORKS BEST?
Though it’s more important that you determine where your potential attendees already live online, here’s a brief rundown on what works well on the various platforms.

Facebook

Like a mini-website. Great for keeping followers up-to-date on news, special updates, etc. Great for building loyalty and brand awareness. Good for letting others promote you through “shares.” Great for linking to articles, posing questions to potential attendees and crowdsourcing speakers and topics. Facebook also has ads and analytics.

YouTube

Video marketing is hot. Plus, you get the added benefit that YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world behind Google (use those key words). Great for teasing speaker content pre-event, and posting 15-minute summaries of the best sessions after the event in order to continue building community with your audience.

Google +

Not yet a dominate tool, but growing in popularity. Mostly tech savvy, early adopters. Great for niche and target marketing, with its “circles.” Preferential treatment on search engines.

Blogging

All about thought leadership and brand awareness. A good place to use industry influencers as guest bloggers. Has the added benefit of being promoted via most other social media channels. Great for building a following as long as you don’t push the sales.

Twitter

Good for disseminating news and special offers. Great for linking to articles, blogs, websites and special landing pages. Good for quick, real-time conversations with followers. Good for monitoring the pulse of your audience. Arguably the best customer service and on-site engagement tool.

LinkedIn

One of the best platforms for showing thought leadership. Not only can you have a company page, but team members all have their own profiles, as well. Good for building and deepening relationships. Good advocacy through recommendations and endorsements. Great for building a network.

Pinterest

Best for women-dominated audiences, as women outnumber men 5-to-1. Great if you have lots of images. Strong loyalty and advocacy among followers.

YOUR FACEBOOK PLAY
Your Facebook Play

Your Facebook Play

Social Media Playbook

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TIP: Make sure you’ve turned on the message

feature of your Page so people can private message you. This is becoming a more common customer service channel, and people want to reach you. No one else can see these messages. You cannot private message people who have liked your Page, but you can respond.

For more information on building your Page, visit: https://www.facebook.com/business/build

Facebook is often the first social media stop for most businesses – probably because it has the largest base of personal users (somewhere between 890 million and 1.11 billion, depending on whom you believe).
Facebook is all about relationships –
whether you’re unearthing new customers/members/attendees, or deepening and continuing relationships with old ones. Your Facebook community can be a strong and loyal advocate, helping to improve your event, crowdsource content and spread the word about your initiatives.

Pages
Your business on Facebook starts with your “Page” – once referred to as a “Fan page.”
(Businesses build Pages; individuals build “profiles.”) Your page is the heart of your Facebook strategy. Customers “follow” your page by “Liking” it, thereby seeing all your public “Posts” in their news feed, which they can then share, like or comment on. All three of these activities cause your original post to then be seen in the news feeds of their friends (depending on everyone’s settings). Once I’ve liked your Page, it’s doubtful I’ll come back to it unless you pull me back through a special promotion. Everything I see about your event or organization will be on my newsfeed, from your posts. So each one needs to count! Many businesses become overly concerned about negative posts made by customers on their Page. While they are publicly viewable on your wall, only posts by you go into the newsfeeds of your followers. Instead of worrying about the negative feedback, welcome these as an opportunity to turn critics into evangelists with some prompt customer support.

Facebook is a highly visual medium. Choose Cover Photos and Profile Pictures to represent your event and engage your audience.
Think outside the box. Just because you produce a widget event, doesn’t mean you have to show widgets all the time. Change your visuals regularly. (Every change you make is a “post” to your followers.)

Facebook is also one of the more complicated social media platforms.
There are a lot of moving parts and various depths of activities. Not to mention the fact that Facebook makes wholesale changes rather frequently. But don’t worry. Setting up and starting your business on Facebook is actually pretty straightforward. You can save the more complex work for later.

Your Facebook Play

Social Media Playbook

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POST AT LEAST

To stay top-of-mind with your customers.

2-5x PER WEEK

According to Facebook, successful posts are:
Short: Those between 100 and 250 characters get
about 60 percent more likes, comments and shares.

Visual: Photo albums, pictures and videos get 180 percent, 120 percent and 100 percent more engagement, respectively.’ Optimized: Facebook has analytics that can
help you learn things such as what times people engage most with your content so you can post during those hours.

Event Pages
It just takes a few clicks to set up an event and invite an audience on Facebook. This is typically
not The Big Event. These are little events held throughout the year – many of them only online. You could send invites to a webinar or host a Q&A session with one of your speakers every Friday. Again, anything that you think will get your audience engaged.

Posts
Posts can be any combination of text, photos, videos and links. But think “engagement”
not “announcement.” Less new speaker pictures and more conversation. Be provocative. Discuss industry issues. You’re trying to build a community and promote an event. People liked your Page because the content was relevant to them. Posting quality content is the most important thing you can do to keep them interested. Make sure your tone is human, friendly and conversational. Speak as a person, not as a brand. Post at least two to five times per week to create a nice cadence and stay top-of-mind with your customers. That doesn’t mean you should feel pressured to create lots of professionally produced content. “Content” in the social media world has a much looser definition. Posting photos, asking questions, profiling attendees and giving behind-the-scenes details of the event all make for great content. Facebook also has tools to help you manage your posts, highlight important content through “pinning” and “starring,” and report on the engagement your posts are creating.

Building your Facebook Community
Mari Smith, author, speaker and a noted Facebook marketing expert, finds the tipping point in social media to be between 500-1,000 fans/followers/friends/email subscribers. She says you’ll start to see measurable results with this size group.

The key to growing your Facebook community is to increase the number of people who “like” your Page – and then to increase
the number of people interacting with your Page. (Remember that when they like it, share it or comment on it, all their friends see that action.) Some simple first steps include: – Ask all your exhibitors, partners, vendors and employees to like your Page. – Invite appropriate friends from your personal profile page. – Click on “Invite Email Contacts” under “Build Audience” on your Facebook Admin Page to upload email lists and send messages of invitation. – Promote your Page everywhere – on your website, printed materials, emails, etc.

Your Facebook Play

Social Media Playbook

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80%
OTHER IDEAS TO BUILD YOUR FACEBOOK COMMUNITY:
Promoted Posts
“Promoting” your post is a paid method of making posts appear higher in news feeds so there’s a better chance people will see them. Facebook users can get dozens upon dozens of posts per day, pushing yours to the bottom. And, a little known fact: Facebook’s algorithms will only show your post to 15 to 20 percent of your followers. Due to the sheer volume of content on the platform, Facebook is continually guessing what’s most relevant to you, and filtering out the rest. So it’s completely possible that some of your followers aren’t seeing your posts at all. Using paid promotions can increase visibility and maximize exposure for important posts. And again, if your followers see it, and interact with it, all their friends see that interaction. For more information on promoting your posts , visit: https://www.facebook.com/business/promoted-posts

of consumers

say they’re more likely to try new things based on a suggestion from a friend on social media.

Sponsored Stories
According to Facebook stats, 80 percent of consumers say they’re more likely to try new things based on a suggestion from a friend on social media. Sponsored stories are a way for you to pay to have your follower’s activities with your Page promoted to their friends. You’ve no doubt seen these if you have a personal Facebook page: “X person and X person like the XYZ show.” Sponsored stories are messages coming from friends about them engaging with your business. You must have a minimum of 100 likes to use the sponsored stories feature.

You choose the audience for your ad based on location, gender, interests, age, etc., and set a budget. Typically, you pay based on impressions, and prices vary based on a number of factors. There is much more to learn about Facebook advertising, including such things as Ad Exchanges and Search Retargeting, but let’s stick with the basics for now. For a deeper dive, visit: https://www.facebook.com/business/connect

Facebook Offers
If you have more than 100 likes you can create special offers and promote them to your audience – which they can claim and share with their friends. Maybe a special registration or hotel discount, or a front row seat at the general session. Anything likely to get them to share. For more information Facebook offers, visit: https://www.facebook.com/help/410451192330456/

Advertising
In June 2013, Facebook announced it will be simplifying its advertising process during the next six months. At present, you can create ads; promote posts (as above); and promote your Facebook Event Pages, among other things.

Your Facebook Play

Social Media Playbook

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TIPS FOR USING FACEBOOK:
– Set a specific goal. How many likes this month?
Do you want to drive registrations or gather leads? Make sure you have a system in place to measure that goal.

– Lots and lots of pictures! People share photos. – Be different. – Be educational. Teach me something relevant and
I’ll share it.

– Rotate your cover and profile photos often. – Keep your end goal in mind with every – Always measure your progress against
your goals.

post. Make offers, lead people to your reg page, etc.

– Respond to people immediately. More people
are using Facebook as a customer service tool, and according to Edison Research, 42 percent of them expect a response within an hour!

– Don’t just post. Have conversations. – Use calls to action. – Use trackable URLs like bit.ly. – Tease me – give me enough information, but make
me want to click the link.

– Experiment. – Always provide a link to your website. – Take the time to learn about Facebook

– Be human; Tell stories; Be entertaining. – Have a content plan – maybe an editorial
calendar. Plan activities, events, contests, polls, surveys, etc.



and how it works.

– Comment on other’s pages as your Page.
Like other industry pages and watch for their news in your feed. Be where your audience already is and let them hear from you.

– Do your research. Review your Insights pages
and competitor’s Facebook pages to see what they’re doing.

– Stay on top of Facebook changes. – Like the Facebook Marketing page
so you get new tips all the time.

– Use Facebook to crowdsource content.

– Add social share buttons everywhere – above the fold. – Make your Page design reflect your objective. – Cross promote your social media channels. – Think mobile.

– Always respond to comments and

private messages so people know you’re listening. their name.

Ask followers what topics or speakers they want, or throw some ideas out and ask for votes. service people.

– Address people by name by typing @ before

– Introduce employees – especially customer

Your Facebook Play

Social Media Playbook

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Measuring your Results
As with any endeavor, it’s critical you measure the results of your Facebook activities so you
know which ones resonate with your specific audience. Through your Admin Panel, you get a snapshot of activity on your page – all likes, comments, messages, etc. But there’s a deeper source, as well.

“Page Insights” is Facebook’s analytic tool. From here you can understand the total performance of your Page:
–

FACEBOOK NEXT STEPS:
Believe it or not, we’ve barely scratched the surface of using Facebook for your organization and/or event. Entire books are written on the subject. Here are the next steps you might want to take:
Then you can sponsor these types of posts to encourage even more engagement. You can also: – Determine what percentage of your reach came from Organic, Paid or Viral reach. – What engagement took place with your posts. – Determine the demographics of your fans – sex, age, country, city, etc. – Understand the source of your likes – like buttons, search results, third-party apps, etc. An Ads Manager tool is also available to measure the results of paid programs. For more on marketing with Facebook, visit: https://www.facebook.com/marketing There are also many third-party tools for more sophisticated measurement/analysis, scheduling, page
management and social ad spend management, and we’ll cover those in a future chapter.

page and how it’s growing.

Total Likes – All the people who have liked your

Apps

– Friends of Fans – The number of unique people who are friends with your fans. Your potential audience if all your fans were interacting with you (and thereby exposing your posts to all their followers). – People Talking About This – The number of unique people who have taken one of the following actions in the last 7 days: Liked your Page Liked, commented on or shared one of your posts Answered a question you asked Responded to your Facebook Event Mentioned your Page

Once called “tabs,” those little thumbnail boxes under your cover photo are apps. By default, all business pages come with “photos” and a “like” counter, but you can add others to customize your Page. You can have a YouTube app for your channel, or a Pinterest or Twitter app. You can also have contest, poll and survey apps. You can visit the App Center to see available apps, but many of them are games. Most business apps will come from approved third-party developers.

Interest Lists

– Weekly Total Reach – The number of unique people who have had any content associated with your Page delivered to their news feeds in the last 7 days. This includes sponsored and promoted posts. In addition to monitoring Page activity, you can also analyze each post so as to begin to learn what your audience responds to.

You can create interest lists of all the major pages and great thinkers in your industry, and have others follow that list. When you follow a list, only the best posts from that list appear in your newsfeed. (If you want to see everything from that list, go to your bookmarks.) People don’t have to like all these pages to see the best posts – they’ll get them from your list. Make sure to set the subscribe function to “public” so anyone can follow your list.

Your Facebook Play

Social Media Playbook

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FACEBOOK

BEFORE THE EVENT:
Get people excited about your event by getting your speakers, attendees and exhibitors/sponsors involved. This includes content previews, special offers, asking questions and more. – Post photos of the staff on a site visit – discussing the benefits of the location. – Share industry tips and best practices – or ask for them. – Create a photo album of all the new products on display at the event. Or all the “green” products. – Pose questions. But make them conversation starters. “Who’s going to spend more on advertising this year and – Start a conversation on a hot industry topic; why?” if it picks up steam, ask followers if they’d – Share links to interesting stories in the like to see a session covering the issue at news that affect your industry. the event. – Play games, host contests and giveaways. – Post speaker videos teasing the content they’ll share. – Showcase a cause if your event is aligned with a charitable project. – Connect with all your partners – exhibitors, venues, sponsors, vendors. Share, like, do things together.

FACEBOOK

DURING THE EVENT:
The goal is to engage the people who are onsite, and show those who didn’t come what they’re missing. Someone needs to be monitoring Facebook continuously, as this will be a customer service channel for some attendees – “I lost my badge;” “The room’s too cold,” etc. – Post key video snippets from the general session. – Lots and lots of pictures. Make albums for various events – lunch, opening night party, etc. – Link to speaker slides and/or handouts. – Post agenda changes and other messages. – Use Facebook for games on the show floor and to move people to different parts of the hall. Have people “check-in” for various activities or prizes.

FACEBOOK AFTER THE EVENT:
The goal here is to continue the conversations started at the event. Ideally, your website should be a year-round community, dealing with industry issues and helping to shape your next event – or even launch new ones. – Post transcripts of the Q&A from key sessions. – Drip out links to session recaps. – Load more video snippets from sessions – or “behind the scenes” speaker interviews. – Load video demos of new products debuted at event. – Post video interviews with attendees on the “one key thing” they took away from the event. – Create and post a highlight reel of the event. – Ask attendees what you could improve for next year. – If you’re planning a replay of the content captured or streamed live, use Facebook to promote the event – or drive people to the archive.

– Release part of a speaker’s deck on Slideshare and link it to a Facebook post. – Make special registration offers. “First ten people to register today get an autographed book from X speaker,” for instance. – Give people a free download if they share the content with a friend. – Host an event – have a speaker come answer questions for an hour on Friday – promote it all week. – Spotlight the industry rock stars registered for your event.

– Help exhibitors draw crowds for demos, drawings, etc. with Facebook events. – Post ground transportation schedules, break locations, etc. – Consider live streaming some of your sessions on your Facebook page.

YOUR TWITTER PLAY
Your Twitter Play

Your Twitter Play

Social Media Playbook

17

Did you catch the Keynote speaker?

No. I missed it. I was in one of the Thinkshops

Me too...

I heard that Ted was here. Is he still Loved him with DataCorp? at CES

I think he’s the CMO at MPACT

While nearly all social media is like electronic word-of-mouth, Twitter may be closest to the real thing. Twitter is authentic, conversational, informal, spontaneous and, thankfully, easy.
“There’s a learning curve to Facebook and LinkedIn that doesn’t really exist on Twitter,” says Michelle Bruno,
President of Bruno Group Signature Events, and a top industry “tweeter.” “You can understand Twitter within five minutes, and because so many people are on it, there’s a constant stream of activity that many – myself included – find addictive.” At its heart, Twitter is simply a public forum where anyone can read, write and share messages (tweets). Messages on Twitter are limited to 140 characters, and can be categorized by keyword or topic by placing a hashtag symbol (#) in front of a word or phrase (with no spaces). These hashtags allow similar tweets to be grouped around a common conversation topic (e.g.

#SuperBowl or #WhiteHouse). All messages on Twitter happen in real time, so you can post a question and get back immediate responses. (There are automation tools that also allow you to schedule tweets in advance.)

TIPS FOR TWEETING:
– Every tweet should have a purpose. What action do you want people to take? – Tie in a link to your registration page when and where appropriate. – Use less of a business voice and more of a personal voice. – Don’t broadcast sales messages. – Be yourself. – Be relevant. – Be conversational. – Provide something your followers can’t find elsewhere – links to behind-the scenes interviews or sneak peeks. – Make it shareable. – People will frequently retweet questions and facts. Use them in your strategy. – Quotes are always popular and shareable.

Twitter is great for getting other people to talk about your event.
You can start the conversation, and others will take it and run. And, if you can involve some Twitter super users in the conversation, you can broaden your reach to thousands of new prospects.

As with all social media, you need a strategy for Twitter.
Why is this your social media platform of choice? Is it highly valued in your industry? Are all the movers and shakers using it? Though it’s easy, it still does take work. “If you’re going to use Twitter, you need to get in the mindset of building Twitter into the fiber of your event,” says Bruno. “Yes, it’s a marketing channel, but it’s also a content channel, an outreach channel, a customer service channel and a community building channel. And it takes a dedicated, continuous approach. You need to tweet every day, and you need to tweet valuable content.”

Twitter is great for getting other people to talk about your event. You can start the conversation, and others will take it and run.

Your Twitter Play

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“Half the battle with Twitter is getting people to know what it is and how to use it. Once you’ve dedicated yourself to it, it’s not rocket science.”
MICHELLE BRUNO, PRESIDENT
BRUNO GROUP SIGNATURE EVENTS

Find, Follow, Listen
As you open your Twitter account, it’s important to completely fill out your profile page and prepare a strong event bio.
– This is the first place people look, and what they read will determine whether or not they choose to follow you. Now you can begin to search for the people and brands you want to follow. “Following” someone means you’ll see their tweets, and, if they follow you back, they will, likewise, see yours.

Start Tweeting
Before you start tweeting, start with a few “retweets” and replies. According to Twitter, new users get more exposure this way. Retweeting means you’re taking someone else’s message and forwarding it to your followers. Replying is commenting back to the original writer. Consider creating personas for your Twitter users, even if it’s just at a high level. If you gather Twitter IDs (“handles”) on registration forms, you have a lot of data to associate. What kind of attendee prospect will want what kind of information? “You want to make sure your conversations are relevant, educational and rich in content,” says Bruno. “Consider creating an editorial calendar.” The best way to build followers on Twitter is to regularly engage and contribute. As people begin to see and retweet your content, others will begin to find and follow you. Publicize your Twitter user name with a link to your Twitter page on your website, in your email signature, in e-newsletters, on printed materials, etc.

Twitter is not a competition to see who has the most followers. What matters is how many relevant followers you have.
Many people adopt an “if-you-follow-me-I’ll-follow-you” rule, but not everyone. Getting the industry influencers to follow you will increase your exposure if they retweet you. But you have to be saying or doing something of interest. They’re not just going to relay your marketing posts.

Start by searching for your industry’s key influencers.
Follow others in your organization, or on your Board. Follow your exhibitors, journalists in your industry, committee members, etc. You can also search topics of interest, companies or hashtags, and then follow the people who converse on those subjects. While you can’t “follow” hashtags, there are automation tools that allow you to watch a stream of specific hashtags.

Be sure to reply when people tweet about your event, and “favorite” and retweet positive messages.
Remember, too, that for many, Twitter is a customer service channel. They may complain or criticize you. How you respond – as well as how fast you respond – will project an image to all your other followers.

Once you’ve followed a few dozen people, sit back and listen. What does your industry talk about?
What’s the tone? What are your competitors or partners tweeting? This is an easy way to get insight that will inform your own strategy.

LEARN TO EXPLORE MORE ADVANCED TWEETING FEATURES:

–

Lists, which allow you to separate people you follow into either public or private groups. (You can also go through other people’s public lists to find followers.)

– Using photos and videos in your tweets. – Connecting your Twitter account to your blog, Facebook or website. – Tweet chats – scheduled, weekly or bi-weekly live chats with a group of others interested in the same topic.

– Direct private messages between you and a follower.

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CRISIS MANAGEMENT:
You know it’s going to happen. A speaker’s going to choke and someone in the audience is going to start tweeting about it. Or someone’s going to get angry that shuttle buses are taking too long, and start berating event management.
There’s no point in avoiding Twitter out of fear that this will happen –
because it will happen whether or not you’re on Twitter. Better to prepare a plan for how to respond when things go wrong. Spend some time on a crisis communications plan.

#Be Prepared. #Have a Plan.
– Your Twitter “owner” should reach out immediately (within five minutes) to the person and address the concerns publicly, and in a personal manner. – Address the point professionally, in a detailed manner. Why did it happen? What are you doing about it? – After responding promptly and publicly, take the conversation offline as quickly as possible. Don’t go back and forth with customers online other than the initial contact.

“Your response will help define you as a brand and as an organizer. Your response to a negative situation can build trust and loyalty as much as your positive behaviors.”
MICHELLE BRUNO, PRESIDENT
BRUNO GROUP SIGNATURE EVENTS

Your Twitter Play

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#SmartEvents
TWITTER

BEFORE THE EVENT:
– Use Twitter before the event to build excitement among those who’ve already registered. – Research the hashtag you’re choosing. Make sure it’s not one common typo away from a hashtag you wouldn’t want to drive people to. Don’t use your full show name – stick with the acronym or shorthand people use when referring to your event. The shorter it is, the less of your 140 characters it takes. – While several people can tweet on behalf of the event, assign one person to “own” twitter outreach. – Create conversations. Twitter is great for organic conversations, but have a backup plan. Lean on your education committee or exhibitor advisory committee to tweet about the event.

DURING THE EVENT:
– Now you have a strategy shift. Instead of building excitement for your event, you want to engage your audience, drive behavior and let those who didn’t attend follow what’s happening onsite. If you have a remote audience viewing a content stream, you also want to use Twitter to bring them into the physical environment. – If your event is new to Twitter, consider planting tweeters in the audience of key sessions to tweet the great content. – Consider Twitter as part of your customer service, and monitor it throughout the event. Twitter is often very popular with attendees who will ask quick questions and expect quick answers.

TWITTER

TWITTER
– –

AFTER THE EVENT:
Your strategy shifts again to become a content channel using material from the event, thereby keeping interest high and keeping your show top of mind. You want your Twitter followers to bring you new followers who can turn into registrants next year. Take the event content and slice and dice it into tiny pieces: Post photos and videos. Post links to pieces of content. Post highlights from a particular session. Extract still photos from videos and post links to the video. Create a great infographic from a session and tweet it.

– Ask attendees , exhibitors and media for their Twitter ID on the registration form and follow them. – Use the list function to curate lists of stakeholders for your event – exhibitors, speakers, staff, etc. Then others can follow your lists, and you have an instantly populated channel of information about your event. Promote your lists.

– If your audience is Twitter-savvy, you might consider a sub hashtag strategy with multiple hashtags for various topics at the event. – Put the event hashtag on everything – signs, slide decks, handouts, printed materials, etc. – Encourage Twitter for voting and session Q&A. – Encourage speakers to add their Twitter handle to their title slides so attendees can connect to them during sessions. – Embed a contest – best photo of the day gets free breakfast tomorrow. – Consider technology that can make Twitter part of your event by pulling tweets onto monitors or video boards. – Physically bring together the people who are active in your Twitter community by hosting a “Tweet-up” onsite. You can include it on the agenda, but don’t make it too formal an event and kill the mystique. It should feel like a group of friends meeting for coffee before going on to the next event.

– Put the Twitter stream onto your show website. An active Twitter stream indicates a live and vibrant community. Others will want to join the conversation. – Don’t put the year of your event as part of your hashtag so you can use it again next year. – Measure your goals. Did you achieve what you wanted? – Organize your twitter stream. Consider using Storify or other applications to organize the stream – and put it into a blog post or newsletter. – Use the Twitter stream as an analytics tool to understand trends, popular sessions, customer support, and other operational items. Moreover, you can understand how your marketing is received by your audience, in terms of topic trending, retweets and mentions.

– Define your goal and ensure it’s something that can be measured. If you want to drive registrations for instance, tweet out a special code and see how many register with it. – If you have a Twitter-savvy crowd, consider paid advertising on Twitter. – Crowdsource content, speakers, even menus. – Tweet links to slide deck previews. – Host competitions – best tweet of the day gets a room upgrade, for instance. – Get exhibitors involved. – Post video interviews with speakers, or links to their appropriate blogs. – Share industry news so you’re seen as a resource. – Retweet your speakers and partners to get people excited about them and their expertise.

– Identify your super users and make sure you’re following them. – A lot of blogs will be tweeted post-event. Watch for them and retweet. – Send thanks.

Your Linkedin Play

YOUR LINKEDiN PLAY

Your Linkedin Play

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Profile
“One of the great things about LinkedIn is that it’s not time sensitive,” says Endean.
“You don’t have to show up at a specific time to participate. You customize the news and discussions you want and then have Digests sent to you daily or weekly.”

Building Connections
As with all social media, the goal is not to have the largest network, but the most relevant network.

Though most people think of Linkedin as a professional networking service – which it is – don’t make the mistake of overlooking this social gem as a place for new business development, lead gen, competitive analysis and more.
Yes, it’s a great place to grow your professional contacts and reputation, but it’s also a great place to promote your event. “More so than ever, LinkedIn is becoming people’s home on social media,” says Tahira Endean, Director of Creative and Production at Cantrav Services Inc., and a large industry presence on LinkedIn. “People are starting to spend more time on LinkedIn and explore more. And as they look for things relevant to them, they will start to find more events. So it’s important you have a presence.” Like Facebook, LinkedIn has lots of moving parts, but once you understand the basics – and if you devote time to really using it – you may be surprised at what a strong tool LinkedIn can be for your events. We can’t cover everything here, but we’ll hit the highlights.

– Your personal profile comes first. This is the first thing people see, so it needs to be great. – Save the vacation photo for Facebook and use a professional business shot. – Right under your name is a “headline.” Many put their title here, but why not write something that makes people want to connect with you, instead? Even better, use keywords in your headline that can get picked up by search engines.

– Actively build your connections. – Import your own contacts from Outlook, Gmail or other sources. – Use the recommendation engine for “people you may know.” – Go to the profiles of your colleagues and friends and peruse their connections. – Go through your second- and third-generation connections and see if there are people you should know. – Search for potential attendees, exhibitors and partners through job title searches and industry searches. – When you ask to connect to someone, don’t just send that standard request. Customize personal messages explaining why connecting with you would be a good thing.

– Think “search engine optimization” when you prepare your summary. Make sure people find you when they’re searching for a “widget expert.” – Customize your profile URL and print it on your business cards. – You can list your “skills and expertise” and your connections can then come in and endorse you for them, adding social credibility to your profile. While you can list up to 50, focus on the 5-10 that best describe your skillset.

– Show your accomplishments. Add projects, publications, awards and the organizations you belong to so people can really get to know you. – Have your account set to “visible” so people can find you. – Decide if and whom you’d like to “follow” to see their posts. – Use your status updates wisely. Post thoughts, articles, links, your blogs, questions, etc., and decide who you share them with. This is what’s pushed out to your network and will define you in others’ eyes.

– You might want to turn off your “visible” account setting if you’re searching for new contacts – but don’t forget to turn it back on when you’re done. – Follow companies that matter to you so you see all its updates.

– Your profile is never finished. Update it regularly.

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Once you start to contribute to discussions, you’ll find that people will want to connect with you. People are often looking for help or answers on LinkedIn.
Joining Groups
“Joining groups on LinkedIn is one of the best things you can do,” says Endean. “It’s not only a great way to grow your contacts, but to become more visible, as well.”
– There are hundreds of groups related to our industry. – Use the search function or “groups you may like” engine to find relevant groups. Or look to see which groups your connections chose. – Click on the Activity tab in Group Stats to ensure it’s an active group. – Being part of a group can help you gain connections, find leads and be seen as a thought leader. – Be active in conversations – read, contribute and “like” – but don’t overtly promote your event. – Once you start to contribute to discussions, you’ll find that people will want to connect with you. People are often looking for help or answers on LinkedIn. – Send connection invitations to the people you meet in discussions. – You can always consider starting your own group on LinkedIn, but be prepared for the time and effort it will take to make it a thriving place in your industry. You may be better off creating impactful discussions within groups that already exist.

Thought Leadership
“I saw an event that had a great interview with a speaker posted in a blog format on LinkedIn that then also linked to the show website” says Endean. “I found it to be an excellent use of LinkedIn.”
– LinkedIn is far better than the other social media at presenting you as a thought leader – and at ferreting out other thought leaders who can become a part of your event.

Advertising
There are two types of advertising on LinkedIn:
– “Ads” for budgets less than $25K, which are self-service, and can target by title, function, company size or industry. Ads are text or text and image or video, and you pay by click or impression.

– LinkedIn “Display Advertising” for budgets over $25K.

– Ask provocative questions to get discussions going. Maybe you’ll strike a nerve and uncover new topics for your event. – Link your blogs regularly on LinkedIn about topics of importance, and dialogue with those who post comments. – Post presentations from your thought leaders on SlideShare.com which was recently acquired by LinkedIn.

Endorsements
After you’ve chosen “skills and expertise” categories on your profile, colleagues can come and “endorse” you for those skills with one click, thereby adding credibility to your profile, and demonstrating that you do, indeed, have that skill or expertise.

Premium Accounts
There are several types of premium accounts available that provide additional services.
– These premium accounts allow you to upgrade your services and see the full profiles of second- and thirdgeneration contacts, have greater search capabilities and send InMail messages (emails you can send to LinkedIn members to whom you’re not connected). There are also valuable search capabilities built into LinkedIn that will allow you to find prospects based on job title, location or organization.

LinkedIn Today
This is the news, articles, blogs, and other items on your home page. It’s completely customizable to meet your needs and is similar to a Facebook or Twitter feed.

Recommendations
A recommendation is a comment written by a LinkedIn member to recommend another member.

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LINKEDiN
–

BEFORE THE EVENT:
Create a group for your event and invite attendees ahead of time. Use the group to post important information, answer questions and allow attendees to network. – Use the search tools to find potential attendees – choose by postal code or job title. – Upgrade to a Premium account so you can market your event better. – “One of the things LinkedIn is best for, is driving traffic to other places,” says Tahira Endean, Director of Creative and Production at Cantrav Services Inc., and a large industry presence on LinkedIn. “Tease information on LinkedIn to drive traffic in directions you want.” – Share information about your event regularly, but don’t shamelessly promote it. – Generate excitement about the topics you’ll be covering in sessions. – Make sure status updates include a link to your registration page when and where appropriate. –

LINKEDiN

DURING THE EVENT:
– It’s probably not as strong as Twitter in this regard, but do post highlights of the day. – Encourage speakers to add their LinkedIn to their title slides so attendees can connect to them during sessions. – When you post something about a session, include a link to the speaker’s profile so people can see the relevance. – “LinkedIn does have a mobile app that I think will keep getting better and better,” says Endean. “Keep your eye on it.”

LINKEDiN AFTER THE EVENT:
– Request connections with all speakers and attendees you interacted with throughout the event. – – Target a few speakers to lead some discussions within your group that will continue to generate more interest after the event. Start a conversation on key takeaways from the event, and follow up with everyone in 30 days to see where they’re implementing. You or a speaker could lead this.

Selectively target your key influencers with – If you’re selling booth space, look up your LinkedIn messages to get them engaged prospect before you make a sales call. and supporting your event. Then you won’t be the only one talking about it. – Use your status update to get a dialogue going. Ask a question and post some of – Post guest blogs from speakers teasing the resulting answers. what attendees can learn.

– Send messages to attendees asking for recommendations on your company page.

YOUR YOUTUBE PLAY

Your Tube Play

Your YouTube Play

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YouTube is probably the most time-intensive of all social media, but in today’s video-obsessed environment, a good YouTube channel can pay big dividends in branding your organization and your event.

And, thankfully, you can capture enough video at one event to feed your channel for the next year.
So once you get your channel built and can learn to quickly tag, annotate and upload videos, it can become routine. Owned by Google, YouTube is also an SEO dream. After all, it’s the second largest search engine in the world behind Google. Tagging videos with the right keywords can leapfrog them ahead of other websites, articles and online resources. YouTube itself has multiple guides and resources to teach you to create and best use its services, so we won’t go into all the details here. But let’s hit the highlights.

What’s your Strategy?
At the first level, your YouTube strategy is about growing subscribers.
But what will help that cause and how does it fit into your larger social media strategy? Do you want to be seen as an educational resource, and will therefore load your channel with how-to videos? Or do you prefer a thought-leadership or advocacy role? Think of your channel just like a broadcast station on TV. What does your industry need enough that they will tune in regularly? What you can’t do on YouTube is upload 25 videos promoting your event. The event promotion should be more subtle. Event speaker videos, for instance, that teach while teasing an upcoming session. You might also consider recording a 20-second event “commercial” that runs prior to other videos. You should also have a plan and a strategy for promoting your videos through email, social channels, newsletters and on your website to drive views of your videos.

Production Values
Good video quality is important, but you don’t necessarily have to be Steven Spielberg.
Viewers will accept homemade quality videos as long as the content is relevant and engaging. But don’t confuse “homemade” quality with “poor” quality. Today, any kid with an HD phone camera can probably get a decent video. If you have someone on staff who can edit video and add audio, even better. What viewers won’t accept, however, is poor audio. Make sure your sound quality is excellent – no background noise, with clear, intelligible voices.

There are two ways to look at videos on YouTube.
You can create an account, upload a video, link it to your website and call it a day. Or you can create your own branded YouTube channel that engages and informs your audience and presents your organization and event as a go-to resource for all things related to your industry. If you’re not quite ready for the latter, you can always start with the former and build.

Content
Your YouTube channel will live and die on the quality of its content.
Let’s face it, interviewing a speaker or subject matter expert – even on an issue of importance – can be beyond boring. What are you going to do to make your videos extraordinary? It’s not just the content, but the delivery that counts.

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TIPS FOR USING YOUTUBE:
– Keep videos short. Shorter videos get more views. The most watched videos on YouTube are under five minutes. – Learn to use clickable annotations and call-to-action overlays. A key purpose of these videos is to drive action – presumably registration. – – – Customize your channel page to reflect your brand and event. – Ask people to subscribe to your page – during the video and in annotations. – Embed your videos into your website, in blogs, etc. – and include a subscribe button. – Always promote each video through your other social channels. – Be consistent in your posting. You need to become a channel people tune into regularly. – Use the “featured channels” function with exhibitors, partners and others to further drive engagement. – Comment, like and subscribe to other related industry YouTube channels. – Consider using the “prevent ads from showing on this page” feature. – Don’t be overly promotional – it will turn away viewers.

Interview industry bloggers and key influencers and ask them to cross-promote the
–

videos on their sites. Make sure there’s a subscribe button embedded.

Put your keywords in your video titles,

write good video descriptions with keywords and include them in the “tags” field. Tags also play a role in helping your videos appear in the “related channels” section of other YouTube channels. (Include your organization and event name in your tags.)

– Create white papers or other resources you can direct people to download at the end of a video so you can capture their information.

Ensure your like, share and subscribe buttons are prominently placed.
–

Create a custom thumbnail graphic for your video to increase views. Learn how at:
https://support.google.com/youtube/ answer/72431?hl=en –

Create playlists to categorize your videos – SME interviews, how-to videos, etc.

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YOUTUBE

BEFORE THE EVENT:
– Upload or create a highlight reel from last year’s event. – Use lots of speaker interviews that tease their sessions. – Interview key staff members about something important happening at the event. – What could you do with videos of the location? – Run contests with user-generated content – best instructional video gets a free dinner on-site. – Interview key industry influencers on topics of importance and ask at the end if they’re going to the event. – Have exhibitors or partners provide product demos. – If a charitable initiative is part of the event, get some footage of the locale and discuss the project. – Record a 20-second “commercial” and precede each video with it in the months leading up to the event. – If you have a larger marketing budget, conduct an advertising
campaign on YouTube - pre-rolls, display ads and competitive placements.

YOUTUBE

DURING THE EVENT:
– Encourage user-generated videos throughout. – Either assign a staff member or hire a videographer to capture your event. – Post a highlight reel each day. – Create a “top ten tips” of the day video. – Interview speakers and subject matter experts. – Record “man-on-the-street” interviews and ask attendees for one takeaway from the day. – Hire a graphic illustrator to illustrate an important session and play it back through time lapse. – (You can also livestream your session through YouTube, but that’s a whole different article!)

YOUTUBE AFTER THE EVENT:
– Start dripping out video snippets from all your sessions. Let those who couldn’t make it see what they missed. – Break each session into a series of videos. – Post all those SME and speaker interviews. – Upload videos from the individual Q&A at the end of sessions – those often provide meaty content. And you know it’s what your audience wants. – Use Youtube Analytics to evaluate key metrics about your videos. With the in-depth analytics, you can review and adjust your video strategy for increased engagement, including what content is driving subscriptions and views, how long viewers are watching your videos, and where your viewers are located.

YOUR BLOGGING PLAY
Your Blogging Play

Your Blogging Play

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Content is king in social media and a good blog can create a lot of great content that you can distribute through your social channels.

“A good content marketing strategy would involve a blog once a week,” says Jenise Fryatt, Social Media Strategist and prolific blogger at Smarter Shift.
Though some might argue that blogging isn’t truly a social media, it’s an important part of your social strategy.
Content is king in social media and a good blog can create a lot of great content that you can distribute through your social channels. There are three key reasons to blog, according to Fryatt. First, with the right content, you’ll be driving interest from potential attendees. Second, you’re building your reputation as a resource and your thought-leadership position within your niche. But the final, and crucial reason for blogging, says Fryatt, is to increase your ability to be found in online searches. “Google loves blogs,” she explains. “And the company has been leading the charge toward shaping the kind of content that’s online today by creating algorithms in their searches that reward fresh, quality content. So if you’re posting fresh, quality content on your site, you’ll rank higher on Google for your chosen keywords.”

Fryatt recommends blogging on your website, first and foremost. Guest blog as often as you can on sites within your niche, too. Guest blogging expands your audience and builds valuable backlinks that help improve your search engine optimization. Promote all your blog posts on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn – with special emphasis on the platforms where you’ve identified communities that might be interested in your event. Fryatt doesn’t recommend separate event blogs if there are higher-level organization blogs. In fact, she prefers consolidation. “The more traffic that lands on one site, the higher you’ll rank for keywords,” she says. “Dividing blogs dilutes your traffic.”

3 KEY REASONS TO BLOG:

1

With the right content, you’ll be driving interest from potential attendees.

Determining the key words for which you want to be found is an important first step.
“Google looks at three types of words – those you use in your blog, those you tag the blog with and those people use to find you,” she explains. “So choose your words carefully and use them in text, subheads, headlines, tags, even photo descriptions.” You definitely want to promote your new posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., but they will not improve your search engine optimization. Only blogging can do that. “My most important advice is to humanize your blog,” says Fryatt. “Brands that can humanize themselves have the advantage.”

2 3

You’re building your reputation as a resource and your thought-leadership position within your niche.

To increase your ability to be found in online searches.

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BLOGGING

BEFORE THE EVENT:
– Define your objective. Are you trying to build registrations? Get more press? – Identify the key words you want to be found by and use them throughout. – As soon as you set your agenda, start blogging with your speakers – consider various formats such as Q&A or Skype interviews. Fryatt recommends a blog with every speaker, if possible. And don’t forget that link to the registration page.

DURING THE EVENT:
– Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are usually better options during the event than a blog since the focus onsite is often more on user-generated content. – But that doesn’t mean you still can’t live blog from the event for those following the event from home. Offer “behind the scenes” information Provide 300 word summaries of the keynote and general sessions Embed videos as a separate blog posting that you’re capturing and uploading online to your blog

BLOGGING

BLOGGING AFTER THE EVENT:
– Repurpose your event content for months – use video clips or text summaries of sessions. – Repurpose the content to make it easy to digest. Edit video down to less than three minutes, for instance. – Take the Twitter stream and create blogs from the Q&A. – Interview attendees for “key takeaways” from the event. – Interview first-time attendees for their take on the event and the industry. – Use lots of pictures from the event. – Analyze your results against your goal. Did you achieve your objective? – When it’s time for next year’s call for papers, make sure to use your blog to recruit suggestions.

– Post guest blogs on other sites – you interviewing a speaker on an industry publication site, for instance. – Release news about the event through your blog. – Make people want to share your blog because they learned something. Nothing speaks higher than thirdparty recommendations. “The beauty of blogging is that it’s not a hard sales message,” says Fryatt. “It’s a useful tidbit of information followed by a registration link. It’s more of a pull than a push.”

YOUR GOOGLE+ PLAY
Your Google+ Play

Your Google+ Play

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Profile

You’ll need to start with a personal profile since all Business Pages require a personal profile to act as the owner of the Page – but you’ll remain anonymous, and you can add other managers later.

Ripples

Circles

If you haven’t started your Google+ page yet, you’re not alone. Google+ is the social media platform still unfamiliar to many. But it will actually feel rather familiar once you get started.
Like Facebook, you have connections (which are placed into Circles), you post status updates, you follow people and you “like” (+1) and share posts. As a bonus, there are communities much like the groups on LinkedIn. While Google+ hasn’t skyrocketed into social media dominance, neither can it be ignored. After all, it’s part of Google, and integrated into all that is Google – Search, YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, Android mobile devices, Google Maps, Google Docs and more. The search engine enhancement alone is reason enough to get started. With a strong Google+ page, a search on your keywords can include relevant posts, photos and videos from your Google+ page to the right of the returned results. And after all, part of your social strategy is to be where your audience is. With 500 million Google+ users, part of your audience is surely here.

Unlike Facebook, where everyone is your friend, Google allows you to create individual groups of connections. Adding someone to a circle means you follow them. Their posts will show up in your newsfeed, just as on Facebook. You can create circles for your friends, your business contacts, industry connections, and so on. You can group industry thought leaders and potential speakers to follow. Exhibitors and partners could be in another circle. As with Facebook, you can put people and Pages in your circles. When you post a status update, you decide which circles get to see it.

Ripples is a data visualization that shows you who’s sharing and resharing your posts most often.

Communities

Though Google+ boasts more than 50,000 Communities, there’s not nearly the level of activity you see in LinkedIn Groups (though there are certainly exceptions). Check the “meetings” communities, for instance, and you’ll find many with five members and one post. The good news is that you might be able to start your own community and dominate your field. Just be sure you’re prepared for the level of work required to build and maintain a thriving community. Public Communities on Google+ are indexed by Google search.

Hangouts on Air

Hangouts on Air allows you to livestream your event to a remote audience on Google+, your YouTube channel and your website. The stream is automatically captured and saved to your YouTube Channel for archive viewing.

Hangouts

Hangouts are basically conversations with one to ten people. They can be text, voice or video. This free platform is a great way to host virtual face-toface meetings and create more engagement around them.

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GOOGLE+

BEFORE THE EVENT:
– As always, start with your strategy. What do you want to accomplish with Google+? Through Circles, Hangouts and Communities, many maintain it’s easier to have real conversations with your customers on Google+ than it is on Facebook. How can that fit into your strategy? – Create your personal profile and build your Circles. – Organize key industry influencers and thought leaders into a circle and engage them in conversations others can watch by sharing the Circle. – Create a Google+ badge to link your Google+ page to your website so those on your website know you have a Google+ page they can follow. – Review and consider joining the communities for your industry. Invite those in your Circles to join you. – If you can’t find a relevant or strong community, consider launching one of your own. – Post regularly – publicly – to all your relevant circles. Start conversations, ask questions and create a dialogue. – Engage with everyone who comments or shares your content. – Hold Hangouts. Get input, collaborate, brainstorm, etc. – Post full size photos and videos. – Do all the things you would do on Facebook – share speaker decks and videos, host contests, share exclusive information, etc

GOOGLE+

DURING THE EVENT:
– Posts on Google+ tend to be a bit longer and more conversational than just status updates, so you may not see a lot of customer service type requests come through during the event. But monitor it anyway. – Post video from key sessions. – Post lots of pictures. – Link to speaker slides and/or handouts. – Create Circles for specific sessions and have speakers invite attendees to join. – Create a Hangout on Air and livestream some sessions.

GOOGLE+ AFTER THE EVENT:
– Get your speakers involved in continuing their conversations in Circles. – Use video or text summaries of sessions to spark conversations in communities for months. – Organize and promote any Hangouts on Air videos on your YouTube channel. – Load video from sessions – or “behind the scenes” speaker interviews. – Load video demos of new products debuted at event. – Create and post a highlight reel of the event. – Be sure to +1 all the blog posts likely to follow the event so all your relevant circles see them. – Use the power of Google to measure your results. – Identify your key influencers by viewing your “Ripples.” – Search Google+ to see what people are saying about the event. – Use “social reports” in Google Analytics to measure the impact of your social media.

– Go to the “shared circles directory” and find industry related conversations and people to follow. – Create your Google+ Business Page, customized with web links, photos, event descriptions, etc. – Link your Google+ page to your website through code available from Google. – Add the 1+ button to content on your site so people can “like” your content and share it with their own Circles.

YOUR PINTEREST PLAY
Your Pinterest Play

Your Pinterest Play

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TIPS AND TRICKS
– Be compelling. No one’s going to follow or repin boring images. Spend some time looking at what the most successful Pinners in your industry are doing.

– Think about what your audience wants
and needs – and aspires to be. – Use your keywords in Pinterest image names and descriptions for search engine optimization. – Contests – from lotteries and raffles to “best boards” and “most shares” are big on Pinterest. Think of a contest for your audience. – A key goal is to get traffic from Pinterest to your blog or website. Embed pins into your blog and link your pins to your website. – Repin, Like and Comment on pins from others in your industry. –

Pinterest is one of the newer social media platforms to appear in the event industry, and you may or may not decide it’s worth your time.
If you have a strong female-to-male attendance ratio, it might be worth a look since more than 80 percent of the current users are women. This is obviously mostly personal use, but Pinterest is moving aggressively toward the business community – no doubt to capture the buying power of all these women. Pinterest is also incredibly visual. If you’re working in an industry with lots of visuals – Radiology, Photography, etc. – Pinterest could be for you. But, as you’ll see, that’s not a requirement. Great images can come from lots of places.

Pinterest is more than just collections of images – it’s an aspiration platform. People pin things they want to buy, places they want to go, things they want to learn to make and things that motivate them to become the people they want to be.
Keep this aspirational aspect in mind as you create your boards and pin content that taps into that.

– your images.

Include a call to action in your pins. Make sure your logo or event name is on

– Tie in a link to your registration page when and where appropriate. – 80 percent of pins are repins – so the key is to create good original content that people will repin. – –

If you still haven’t seen it, think of Pinterest as a wall of bulletin boards.
You might have one for recipes and one for pets and one for vacation destinations. On each board you “pin” pictures or videos. Next time you’re looking for a new recipe, you call up that board and see which one looks good. For you, it’s an organization tool. But here comes the social part – your images can be shared and repinned, and your boards (and you) can be followed.

Inspiration
Pinterest has another use for event planners – production inspiration and ideas.
There are already hundreds of boards with meeting planning ideas – everything from staging and banquet décor to event technology and trade show booths. You can pin ideas all year long, then share the boards with your decorator, exhibitors, etc.

–

– web pages.

Credit the sources of your pins. Don’t be too promotional. Overlay a message on your image. Be sure to add a “Pin It” button to all your

– Add the Pinterest bookmarklet to your browser for easy pinning when you’re online. –

– of pins your audience responds to.

Vertical images work best. Use Pinterest analytics to learn the types

Your Pinterest Play

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PINTEREST BEFORE THE EVENT:
– Create a board to tell the story of your organization or event. Find old photos from the early days. – Get people excited about the location by creating a destination board. – Create an agenda board with the names of sessions over beautiful photos – can you find a theme to tie them together? – Create an exhibitor or partner board, but do something fun with it – use their baby photos and turn it into a contest to match them with exhibitors on-site, for instance. – Create a speaker board to spotlight your speakers. Instead of the standard headshot, ask speakers to provide images that relate to their speaking topic in a creative way.

PINTEREST
–

DURING THE EVENT:
Pinterest could be a lot of fun at events with usergenerated content. Create Pinterest Contributor Boards and get a group of active Pinners to upload to an “on-site” board throughout the event. – Create a board documenting all aspects of the event, acting as an archive of the event and inspiration for others within the industry, including: Exhibitor booths, especially those with interesting booth design or signage Room sets and staging Food & beverage set up Networking events

PINTEREST AFTER THE EVENT:
– Ask attendees to create “key takeaway” boards and let the industry vote for the best one. – Create a video board with the best 3-minute takeaways from each session. – Build a “highlight” board from sessions, lunches, parties, etc.

The “Other” Social Media Platforms

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Delicious: A social bookmarking service that lets you save

Though the majority of your audience will be covered by the previous social media channels, there are others – and they’re all vying to be the next Facebook. Here’s enough information about the others to make you sound hip at a party.
Bebo: Once a rising star in social media, Bebo has spent more of 2013 in court than in development. Similar to Facebook with its profiles, photos, updates and videos, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May, 2013, after shareholders filed a motion in February, 2013, to remove the CEO and appoint a receiver. Branch: Branch is about bringing people together for a
conversation. “People” could be customers, attendees, coworkers, a community, subject matter experts, journalists, etc. You pull in content, such as a tweet or a video, and start a conversation – adding people via email or Twitter. You can publish the results by sharing a link or embedding the branch in a website or other online location. An activity feed keeps you alerted to changes in your “branches.”

anything from the Web – videos, pictures, blog posts, articles, music – and share them with others, while also allowing you to browse content curated from the community or friends.

Kumbuya: Create or join themed communities and post

media and user-generated content. With the community manager’s approval, members can also sell products to one another. Your community can be embedded into your website.

Fancy: A social recommendation tool, Fancy is a crowd curated catalog of goods, places and stores. It’s described as part store, part photo sharing and part wish list.
Flickr allows you to form a “group” for your event and invite attendees to post their own photos to your Flickr event album. Share the link for the album with everyone. Flickr was acquired by Yahoo in 2005 and has been its primary photo platform ever since.

Meetup: A social network for local groups to find each other and organize face-to-face meetings. My life: An ambitious social media, helping users find personal and professional contacts, and manage and interface with all their other social media and email, all in once place. Myspace: Back from the brink, Myspace was relaunched
in January, 2013, after being partially purchased by Justin Timberlake. Primarily a vehicle for artists and musicians to showcase their work, Myspace promises to let you collect, curate and share music, photos and mixes.

Flickr: An online photo management and sharing application,

Foursquare: Location-based social networking for mobile

devices. Users “check-in” to share and save the places they visit. Foursquare can also make recommendations and offer deals based on where you, your friends and others like you have been.

Instagram: A photo sharing social media, Instagram allows you to take pictures, apply fun filters and share them with your followers, with other Instagramers or through a number of social channels, including Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. After being acquired by Facebook in April, 2012, Instagram added the ability to share 15-second videos in June, 2013. Deeper Facebook integrations are expected in the future.

Path: A private messaging and photo sharing social network for mobile devices, Path allows you to send one-on-one or group messages with your voice, text, photos, location or “stickers” created by famous artists. Your Path messages can also be shared to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, Instragram and Pinterest. Path limits your social network to 150 friends to encourage you to select only high-quality connections. Perfspot: In addition to the standard find-communicate-share social functions, Perfspot also allows users to watch over 200 million videos, TV shows and sports games.

The “Other” Social Media Platforms

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Reddit: An online community (and many sub communities) where users post stories, vote them higher or lower in importance and comment on them. Everything from humorous memes to serious political discussions.
the premise of privacy – no sharing of personal data, no profiling to serve you ads, etc. You create groups which can be invitation only or public. You can have different groups for work, family, friends, etc. Share what you want, with whom you want. You own your content.

Sgrouples: Launched in 2012, Sgrouples was founded on

Thumb: A mobile community providing opinions to brands and each other. Pick your target demographic, ask a question and get hundreds of responses in seconds. “Do I look good in these red sunglasses?” You get thumbs up, thumbs down and comments. You can also engage with responders one-on-one, if you want. Business can pay for Thumb to test messaging, creative, etc. Tumblr: Purchased by Yahoo in June 2013, users post multimedia content to short-form blogs. Vine: A mobile app that lets you post six-second videos to social networking services. Owned by Twitter. Yammer: Private enterprise social networks. Similar
to consumer social networking, but more for company collaboration, file sharing, knowledge exchange and team efficiency. Used for private communications within organizations, members or groups.

SoLoMo Apps
These are probably the best examples of a new type of social media called social-localmobile (SoLoMo) networks/apps. Ban.jo: A mobile app that lets you explore places and activities across your social networks. There is a specificlocation-based target within the app for events. A SXSW button within Banjo, for instance, will provide users a feed of content being published from the event – whether it’s Tweets, Facebook statuses, or Foursquare check-ins. Highlight: Highlight is a social app that runs in the background on your mobile device, popping up profiles of other Highlight users if they’re in your physical vicinity. You see their name, photo, mutual friends and anything else they’ve chosen to share. Roamz: A location-based mobile app that “discovers” restaurants, bars, shops and events where you are. Search for a type of food and see what people are talking about. Bored and looking for something to do? Find out what those near you are doing.

Sharetize: Not so much a social media, as a way to get paid
for sending advertising messages on your social feeds. You browse campaigns, find one you like and post it to your social networks. The advertisers provide the messaging, but you pick the version that sounds most like your voice. You get paid to post, and also per click.

Slideshare: A slide hosting service allowing users to upload slide decks privately or publicly. Slideshare also supports documents, videos, PDFs and webinars. Others in the community can “favorite,” comment or download the presentations. They can also be embedded on blogs and websites. Tagged: Dubbed “the social network for meeting new people,” Tagged focuses not on existing social relationships, but the social discovery of like-minded people. Dating, social games, interests, passions, hobbies.

Yelp: Local business search with online reviews. You can also use Yelp to find events, and to talk with other Yelpers.

Analyzing Your Plays

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HOW TO MEASURE YOUR RESULTS:
DRIVE PARTICIPATION LEADS, REGISTRATION, SHARES PROVIDE MORE VALUE FOR SPONSORS SOCIAL IMPRESSIONS, MENTIONS, BOOTH CHECK-INS SUPPORT TICKETS RESOLVED, MENTIONS RESPONDED TO FEEDBACK ITEMS, PERCENTAGE OF RETURN ATTENDEES ACCOUNT SETUPS, VISITS, NUMBER OF POSTS MENTIONS, INFLUENCERS IDENTIFIED, HASHTAG USES

PROVIDE EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SERVICE ENHANCE THE PARTICIPANT EXPERIENCE

GOAL

BUILD COMMUNITY

METRICS

BUILD/STRENGTHEN BRAND

UNDERSTAND DEMAND IN NEW & EXISTING MARKETS

REPEAT REGISTRANTS, TIME TO SELLOUT

Source: Justin Ramers, Director of Social Media for ACTIVE Network

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4 KEY METRICS FOR MEASURING SOCIAL ROI:
Conversation rate
The number of replies to each original post.

It really doesn’t matter which method you choose to measure your results. What matters is that you do.

Amplification rate Applause rate

The number of re-tweets, shares, etc. to an original post.

The number of likes, +1s, favorites, etc. to an original post.

Economic Value

A system of assigning a dollar value to each of your social goals and calculating a “per visit goal value” to each of your social platforms.

There are as many ways to measure the success of your social media endeavors as there are articles on the subject in a Google search. Seriously. Everyone has a theory on what and how you should be measuring.

Many encourage the Conversation-Amplification-ApplauseEconomic Value system championed by Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, whereby you measure four key metrics in order to learn what your audience is most interested in, and assess your social ROI. Others will recommend point systems to quantify likes and share, or measuring impressions, trackbacks and conversions. There’s also those who advocate “share of voice” and social listening. It really doesn’t matter which method you choose to measure your results. What matters is that you do. Social media is too time-intensive an effort not to know if you’re getting more out of it than you’re putting into it. And if you ever hope to get more of an investment in social media, senior management will need proof that you’re either generating revenue or saving money.

THE 3 ESSENTIAL DATA POINTS:
Impressions: How many people are seeing the posts I’m making? Clicks: How many website visits am I getting from each of post? Conversions: How many people are registering?
(Impressions) x CTR = (Clicks) x Conv-% = (Conversions)
Source: Justin Ramers, Director of Social Media for ACTIVE Network

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There are hundreds of tools to help you analyze your social media success. Some are designed specific to a social platform, while others are cross-platform. Many are free. Here are some well-known cross-platform tools:
Argyle Social: Categorizes content to

CustomScoop: An online “news clipping” service covering both traditional and social media. Features on-demand analytics, daily news briefings, crisis monitoring and social media buzz reports. Google Analytics: Track your social posts as easily as you do your website. Google analytics will identify where your traffic comes from, what keywords are used and which are your most popular posts.
manage social networks, schedule messages and tweets, track brand mentions and analyze social media traffic.

Monitor social conversations; uncover trends, topics and insights; create, execute, measure, and fine-tune campaigns.

Oracle Social Relationship Management (formerly Collective Intellect): For the social enabled enterprise.

Spredfast: Enterprise level social measurement for identifying which of your content and engagement strategies worked. Compare channels, accounts, regions, brands, campaigns, content and more. Sprout Social: Social media monitoring with analytics, scheduled publishing and integration with CRM systems – all with mobile access. Synthesio: A global listening platform
monitoring over 100 countries and 50 languages.

determine its effectiveness; analyzes the relationship of social engagement to closed/ won opportunities; and helps design marketing campaigns by incorporating social data.

Hootsuite: A social media dashboard to

Radian6: Identifies and analyzes online conversations about your organization, your product (event) and competitors; evaluates reactions to your campaigns and lets you see which content is connecting. SDL (formerly Alterian): Blends marketing
analytics, campaign management and social media capabilities, and analyzes social data to identify your competitive position, brand reputation, customer profiles and more.

Beevolve: Social media monitoring and ROI
measurement software. Monitor your brand mentions, schedule and launch social media campaigns, and measure resulting sales and engagement from those campaigns.

Klout: A free service that scores the influence Marketing Grader: A free tool from

Sysomos: A real-time monitoring dashboard that collects relevant online conversations, detailed metrics, demographics, influencers and historical analysis across all major social platforms. Trackur: Monitors your online reputation, measures social media trends and analyzes social media mentions for your organization or event. TwentyFeet: An “egotracking” service that
keeps track of your social media activities and monitors your results.

you have on your audience through social media.

that monitors your activity, tracks your content performance so you can improve your reach and engagement, and monitors your feedback rates. Social media listening that analyzes activity across all the major social networks. Use it to search, monitor, analyze, target and engage in real-time. that tracks brand mentions, your competition and keywords related to your industry. and reputation management service. You can segment social data by mention-type – complaint, review, referral, buying signal; or by author-type – customer, competitor, prospect, advocate, detractor, etc. suggestions and tools to help optimize your social media marketing.

BlitzMetrics: A social media dashboard

Hubspot that grades your social media reach, how engaging your posts are and how well your website is optimized for social media sharing.

Shoutlet: Enterprise community management and moderation platform with design tools, publishing capabilities, social contests and promotions, social ads, social listening and analytics. Simply Measured: Enterprise level social
media analytics and reporting from more than a dozen social media platforms in Excel reports or online.

Bottlenose:

NetBase: A social media management and publishing system that provides analysis of campaigns, competitors, categories, brands, partners and more. Netvibes: A social media dashboard and
reader synched across desktop, mobile and tablet devices. Free version with the basics; premium version adds social analytics and real-time alerts.

UberVU: An analytics platform monitoring

Brand chats: A social media monitoring tool Brandwatch: A social CRM, marketing

Social Mention: Social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user-generated content from more than 100 social media platforms. Socialbakers Analytics Pro: Competitive
monitoring for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Measures fan growth, social interactions, engagement rates and question response rates and times.

trending stories and conversation influencers. Includes a publishing dashboard for scheduling posts, and conversation maps for regularly used words and phrases.

Twitter and LinkedIn, and delivers you an email summary. for customer support, public relations, lead generation and competitive insights.

NutshellMail (from Constant Contact): Tracks your activity on Facebook, NUVI: A social media command center

Viral Heat: A unified suite of social services allowing you to monitor online conversations, analyze your social results, manage your accounts, publish pre-scheduled posts and identify your advocates. Visible: A social media monitoring, analytics
and engagement platform allowing for brand and competitive analysis, trend spotting, PR and crisis identification and influencer marketing.

SocialMotus: Social media management,
monitoring and publishing for Facebook and Twitter.

Crowdbooster: Social media analytics with

Wildfire (from Google): A social marketing
suite for social promotion and advertising, mobile and desktop page management, messaging and real-time analytics.

Social Media Terminology
Aggregate: The process of gathering (and sometimes redistributing) like information from a variety of online sources. Alerts: Emails delivered to you when specific words or phrases you want to monitor are mentioned online – such as your event, your organization, your competitors or topics of interest. Can also be viewed in RSS readers or dashboards of social monitoring tools. Backchannel: Real-time online conversations taking place behind the official conversation – such as a Twitter conversation going on between attendees during a conference session. Bit.ly/ Tinyurl.com/Ow.ly: Free link shortening services that condense long URLs to make them easier to share through social media. Also a method for tracking and organizing your links. Blogosphere: The universe of all blogs, or all blogs within a specific community. Blogroll: A list of blogs a specific blogger follows. Chat: communication between two or more users on a website, social platform or instant messaging application, happening in real time. Collaboration: Considered by many to be the highest form of social – the ability to work together across departments, organizations, countries and time. Requires the ability to share and store files, annotate and comment, meet online, create master calendars, project plans, etc. Comments: Responses posted by users of social media to pictures, articles, blogs, status updates, etc. Community: Sometimes emerging organically around a specific topic, but often organized through recruitment processes, a community serves the shared interests for a group of people. It usually exists so participants can share ideas and find solutions to specific issues. Can be loosely organized on public social media, or be more complex, private entities on proprietary social platforms. Crowdsource: Using the collective voice of members of a social platform to source content, make decisions and solve problems. In the event industry, crowdsourcing speakers and session topics is becoming more commonplace. Curate: The process of aggregating and filtering the masses of content on the Internet to redistribute to your audience only the best and most pertinent. Embed: The process of using a piece of HTML code to place a video – or even a live stream – into a website or blog, while the original content is hosted on another site. Engagement: The holy grail for social media. Getting people to actively interact with your brand or event by commenting, sharing, posting, etc. Facilitator: A person who manages an online conversation, keeping people on target, asking for clarification, etc. Geolocation: Used for certain social media; the process of identifying the real-world geographic location of an object (especially a mobile device). Geotagging: Adding geographic identification data to photos, videos, etc., which allows other content from the same geographic location to be found. Groups: A looser configuration of people than a community, but still organized around a specific topic or interest. Hashtag: Once the domain of Twitter, but now used by Facebook and other social media. A symbol (#) used to precede a word or phrase in order to group and search for all posts around a similar topic or conversation stream (e.g. #SuperBowl, #WhiteHouse). Instant messaging or IM: Real-time chatting, usually between two people, using the same instant messaging tool or social media. Considered a quicker alternative to email. Lurkers: A person who views social media, but rarely or never participates. Meet-up: Face-to-face meetings of people who belong to specific groups or share a common interest. Meet-ups often happen at industry events. Meme: A concept (often humorous) that spreads rapidly through social media. Often a photo with text. Newsfeed: A news feed is literally a feed full of news or status updates. On Facebook, for instance, the News Feed is the homepage where users can see all the latest updates from their friends. Outposts: Places where you have an online presence but you do not own. (As opposed to your “home base,” which might be your website or blog.) Participatory Culture: The social media culture of sharing and collaborating. Permalink: The link to a specific entry on a blog or page on a website – as opposed to the main URLs. Photosharing: Sharing your photos on social media sites, and allowing others to then share them again. Post: An entry on a social media site, such as a status update, a share, a blog post etc. Profile: The personal and/or professional information about you, by which like-minded people on social media can find you. RSS (Really Simple Syndication): A process allowing content creators to offer subscriptions to their content, which is then viewed by users in “readers” as it’s published, rather than on the original website when they search for it. Share: The backbone of social media. To post or repost content is to share it. Text, images and videos are offered to others to encourage further sharing – which can lead back to you through tagging. Social Bookmarking: Services that help users organize, search and share social and Web content. Social Listening (or Monitoring): The act of listening (and hopefully responding) to customers over social media as they discuss your brand, your event or industry topics, as a means to improve the brand or event.

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Social Media: Sharing content with others via social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) Social Media Channel: The various social media platforms on which we interact with one another online, such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. Social Media Marketing: Leveraging social media to generate awareness or drive demand of a product, brand, event or organization. Social Media Optimization: Using many social media outposts and communities to increase awareness of your brand or event. Social Mention: The mentioning of your brand, organization or event on social media. Social Networks; Another term for “social media channel.” Social Reach: Describing how wide a net an organization or event has cast online. Expanding social reach is often accomplished through multiple accounts for different audiences, products, topics, etc. Tagging: Attaching keywords to content to describe the item and allow it to be easily found through searches and aggregation. Threads: A series of comments and/or conversations stemming from an original post. Trackbacks: A linking mechanism allowing bloggers to mention an item on another blog, and thereby leave a link on the original post, back to the second blog. Transparency: Refers to the importance of being genuine on social media, and making your social interactions authentic, rather than veiled, or even outright, sales messages. User Generated Content: Material on your website or social site, created by your customers or partners – photos, videos, blogs, etc. Web 2.0: The term used to describe the use of the World Wide Web as something more than static pages. The Social Web.

Conclusion

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Our goal with this Social Media Playbook was to help you review (and perhaps retool) your social strategy, find the platforms best for your organization and event and learn how others are implementing social into their events.
As stated by Justin Ramers, Director of Digital and Social Media for ACTIVE, “Social has a big place in
marketing, to be sure, but it also is an important part of Customer Service, Research & Development, Sales and ultimately customer satisfaction. It can do more than just market your event. At its core, social is about building relationships with your customers and prospective customers.”

We would like to thank those who took part in creating this Playbook, including:
Justin Ramers Director of Digital and Social Media, ACTIVE Michelle Bruno President, Bruno Group Signature Events Tahira Endean Director of Creative and Production, Cantrav Services Inc. Jenise Fryatt Social Media Strategist and Blogger, Smarter Shift

About ACTIVE Network, Business Solutions Group
ACTIVE Network is powering the next generation of SMART EVENTS™ through its Business Solutions technology suite which provides intelligent data & insights to accelerate revenue growth, deepen attendee engagement and gain efficiency. Customers of all sizes—including small and medium-sized businesses, enterprise corporations, associations, tradeshows and expos—benefit from a single technology partner for all of their event management needs. The Business Solutions technology suite includes ACTIVE Conference™ for large flagship conferences, ACTIVE RegOnline™ for attendee management solutions, ACTIVE StarCite™ for strategic meetings management and event expense management, and the ACTIVE Marketplace to connect events with suppliers.
For more information on how ACTIVE Network can help you turbocharge your event marketing and social media: (US Toll free) 855ACTIVE8 / 855.228.4838 (UK) +44 (0) 207.313.5701

We look forward to continuing this dialogue, and hope you’ll share your thoughts and personal experiences with us:
Twitter: @ACTIVEBusiness Facebook: facebook.com/ACTIVEBusinessSolutions [email protected]

At ACTIVE, we strive to provide not only the technology solutions to power your events, but the practical applications and “how-to” education to make those events successful – whether success
is measured by increasing revenue, deepening attendee engagement, gaining back-end efficiencies or all of these measures.

[email protected]

For more information on ACTIVE Network Business Solutions please visit ACTIVEevents.com.