Download pdf - Social Media in the New Event World

Echelon Design, Inc. www.echelondesigninc.com

June 2010

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Table of Contents

The Changing Event Landscape! 3

Leading Social Media Tools in Events! 4

Social Media Enhances and Streamlines Event Operations! 4

Social Media Fosters More Efficient and Democratic Event Program Planning Processes! 4

Measuring the Impact of Social Media on Events! 5

Audience-Generated Content Infuses New Energy and Heightens Audience Involvement in Events! 5

Aligning Social Media Applications in Events! 6

Mobile Phones Help Fuel Social Media Use in Events! 6

Case Studies of Social Media in Events! 7

Leveraging Social Media in Hybrid Events - Cisco Live Case Study! 7

Social Media Serves as Cornerstone of Marketing Efforts for IBM’s IMPACT 2009 SOA Conference ! 7

Spawning Live Events from Online Communities - The EventCamp Experience! 8

Social Media in Events - The Long Term Perspective! 8

The increasing trend of Social Media use in events.! 9

The Changing Event Landscape

Events are entering a new era, and social media is becoming an increasingly important and visible element in the transformation of events. This was underlined by a number of findings in an Exhibitornet survey on social media use in events, which was released in January and sponsored by Echelon Design, an exhibit marketing firm developing social media campaigns for clients and its own marketing purposes. Of the 383 respondents, almost half (46%) reported using social media as part of their exhibit marketing efforts, and 90% felt their social media marketing campaigns are meeting or exceeding their tradeshow marketing objectives.

In another key finding, social networking sites constituted the most common tool used by the companies surveyed to promote their corporate events. 71% of the respondents indicated using social networking sites such as Facebook in their corporate events. In addition, 58% felt social media has “moderate” potential in exhibit and event marketing and 32% felt it has “limitless” potential. “Clearly, companies are starting now to recognize the value of social media in events,” asserts Kenny Lauer, Executive Director of Digital Experience at George P. Johnson Company.

However, the full extent of social media’s use in events is still not very well known. Social media has greater power in events than many realize. Not only does it help to revitalize and extend physical events, but it can also allow attendees to spontaneously create events by themselves, especially through online communities. Social media fits in well with the trend towards more expansive, audience-driven, and multilayered events that don’t have a fixed endpoint. In fact, it facilitates the delivery of these various event experiences. Social media is enabling event organizers to offer more personalized and customized experiences, and to better manage and enhance event activities.

According to Jeff Hurt, Director of Engagement and Education at Velvet Chainsaw Consulting, social media is “helping event organizers extend their event experiences, build a community for their events, engage all stakeholders before the event, and help attendees stay connected with each other.”

One of its key benefits is its capacity to “help draw attendees back into events, and keep them engaged,” stresses Lauer.

At the same time, social media use in events isn’t fully reaching its potential for various reasons. “Many event organizers are still trying to determine the best strategies to exploit social media in their events,” observes Joshua Rush, Account Executive and Exhibit Marketing Strategist at Echelon Design. In particular, the use of social media at events of associations “is still relatively new,” in his experience. Rush has found that even events relating to social media have sometimes “lagged” in truly harnessing social media at their events. For example, as an attendee at the 2010 Mobile World Congress, Rush received updates at the event, but was surprised that the event didn’t make greater use of SMS updates.

Social Media in the New Event World 3

Leading Social Media Tools in

Events

Twitter has emerged as one of the leading social media tools in events. In fact, the Exhibitornet results indicate that 59% of those surveyed used some form of microblogging, including Twitter, in their corporate events. According to Eric Lukazewski, Marketing Director and Social Media Strategist at Echelon Design, “Twitter is one of the more utilized social media tools in events, and the most effective social media tool for stimulating real time audience participations.” As he observes, “Twitter is being utilized both as a standalone tool with hashtags and a back channel for virtual audiences.”

Lukazewski calls attention to the very successful use of Twitter at EventCamp 2010, which represented a successful online and virtual audience participation. At the same time, “Twitter isn’t applicable for all events,” points out Sam Smith, Event Technology Consultant and Editor of the Interactive Meeting Technology blog. He believes “Twitter has great value in events, but it’s not appropriate for all events. For events requiring the utmost privacy, the use of private social media tools is advisable rather than Twitter,” contends Smith. Twitter tends to work well at trade shows in general. For example, Smith feels Twitter fit in well with the objectives of this year’s Virtual Edge Summit, allowing virtual audiences to follow the event via their mobile phone, and connect with those at the physical event attendees.

According to Kenny Lauer, such social media tools as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are commonly used for global and U.S. events. Flickr has also been used to some extent while blogging has been been particularly useful for events in emerging markets, he’s found.

Lauer notes that his company uses Twitter differently at different points in the event lifecycle. For example, they use Twitter before physical events to generate buzz and help promote those events. Afterwards, Twitter is commonly used to drive traffic to post-event websites.

According to Lukazewski, blogs are playing an increasing role in events, particularly because of their ability to help build online communities around events and foster greater audience participation. They’re being employed by a wide range of event organizers in certain cases after events, and help to link event organizers with exhibitors, as well as

helping exhibitors reach attendees. “In essence, blogs can help sustain the energy and momentum built up by events,” he maintains.

As Sam Smith notes, “blog posts, video posts, and white papers can be very effective for disseminating bite-sized nuggets from events, such as bits of speaker presentations, to wider audiences, promoting events, and providing valuable, packageable content that can be shared with wider audiences. In effect, blogs can be utilized on online communities to distribute content to a broader audience.”

Social Media Enhances and

Streamlines Event Operations

Lauer reports that his company primarily employs Twitter at physical events for real time tracking purposes, including alerting attendees to important information, responding to operational issues that arise during events, monitoring channels during events, and maintaining a pulse on those events

As Jeff Hurt points out, “Social media is allowing event organizers to monitor their audiences and gain real-time feedback about their events, enabling them to be optimized.” For example, at a meeting of the National Association of National Dental Plans last year, the audience used social media to interact with the event organizers offsite, allowing the audience to receive notification about such matters as A/V problems and room changes.

Social Media Fosters More

Efficient and Democratic Event

Program Planning Processes“Social media is affording event and conference organizers a great program planning tool, allowing them to crowdsource topics by asking audiences which ideas they’d like to see covered in their events,” notes Hurt. “It is allowing speakers to converse on an ongoing basis with attendees during and after events,” he adds.


"Social media is allowing event organizers to monitor

their audiences and gain real-time feedback about their

events” enabling them to be optimized

Sam Smith also alludes to social media’s use in program planning for events to crowdsource ideas, allowing the audience to select topics and vote on their favorite topics. This approach was applied, for example, at the 2010 South by Southwest conference, where the audience could vote on topics for the event via Twitter. In fact, many event organizers are shifting towards more community based events, with events developing organically from communities.

Measuring the Impact of Social

Media on Events

The impact of social media on events can be marked, but is often not easily measured. Lukazewski cautions that social media metrics are difficult to produce when attempting to validate a solid ROI on event sales, and that it is difficult to gauge how many social media followers relating to events are true audience members. But social media can play an instrumental role in building greater brand and community awareness and strengthen those communities around events, which indirectly will contribute to a positive ROI, he adds.

Some new techniques are helping to give greater insight into the effectiveness of social media in events. For example, conference organizers can track the impact of social media on event registrations through the use of a discount code through such social media tools as Facebook and Twitter, Hurt points out.

Audience-Generated Content

I n f u s e s N e w E n e r g y a n d

Heightens Audience Involvement

in EventsSocial media is helping drive the development of audience-generated content at events, particularly at unconferences and barcamps. Changing consumer attitudes, including strong consumer desire to control the marketing messages they receive and pull content that meets their needs, is helping drive audience generated content, Hurt maintains. In this environment, new forms of audience-generated content are emerging, including peer to peer roundtables, where discussions begin in social media forums about hot topics of interest to attendees that

can continue at physical events. Audiences are becoming more involved in developing topics for events through such formats as open source forums, allowing them to bring their own knowledge to such events.

Lauer believes audience-generated content has been underutilized, and that it has the capacity to create memorable experiences, especially because the audience becomes a part of the event experience. The audience can help promote the event by driving traffic from their friends to events for which they create content. But he notes that a well defined strategy is necessary to exploit audience-generated content. Event organizers must afford their audiences the option of determining the kind of content they’d like to develop for their events. In addition, audience-generated content must be a deliberate and strategic part of events in order to be effective, he emphasizes.

John Jainschigg, Director of Internet and Community at Ziff-Davis Enterprise, believes audience-generated content of any kind enables the creation of a richer and more powerful collaboration and networking experience for attendees, expanding the real-time and asynchronous online conversation around events, and generating additional valuable content that becomes part of the web-based archival history of those events.

Joshua Rush expects that there will be much greater use of audience-generated content in events, especially as attendees become more proficient at creating event-related content. He predicts that there will be much greater opportunities for audience-generated content to reach a broad audience, fueled by increasing use of such devices as smartphones. But he emphasizes that audience-generated content must be interesting and entertaining to have a real impact, and that relatively few people are adept now at developing such content. Ultimately, that kind of content must offer added value to succeed.

Dennis Shiao, VP of Product Marketing for InXpo, maintains that audience-generated content has become a more integral part of the event experience, as events shift towards empowering attendees and allowing attendees to create event content themselves. A perfect example of that trend is unconferences, which have no predetermined structure, and are created and determined by attendees on the spot, he says. Event audiences clearly want to be empowered, and are participating as “publishers” of event material on such user-generated content platforms as blogs and YouTube. One of the best examples of “audience influence” on events was the viral spread of


audience-generated content at a conference at the 2008 South by Southwest conference. At that event, Sarah Lacey interviewed Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. The event took off largely based on Twitter feeds from attendees at that event, which spread virally, and generated great attention for the event, Shiao contends.

Sam Smith sees audience-generated content, including critiques and reviews of shows, growing in importance at events. He believes more people will want to create event-related content and possess the right tools to publish that content. As an increasing number of people become familiar with publishing tools for user-generated content, they’ll utilize them more often to create event-related content, he predicts.

Aligning Social Media Applications

in Events

Eric Lukazewski contends that haphazard applications of social media in events will be largely ineffectual. For example, simply creating Twitter hashtags or landing pages for events will likely have little impact, he asserts. Lauer echoes that point, noting that generating hashtags for events without guiding audiences on their use is practically pointless. “In order for social media to be effective in events, we must create a forum to encourage audience participation,” Lukazewski contends.

He cites the example of IMTS’s blogger tour, which invites attendees of IMTS’s bi-annual event to guest host a blog, as a more productive application of social media in events. This kind of tour helps build a sustained community around the event, he points out.

Additionally, a certain level of education to participants on how to utilize the tools will be required of organizers who wish to apply Social Media in their events.

Mobile Phones Help Fuel Social

Media Use in Events

Advances in mobile technology, such as smartphones, have enabled the wider and more timely delivery of social media in events.

The impact of mobile devices and especially smartphones on events is becoming very evident, according to Shiao. Mobile devices can play a major role in linking physical and virtual event attendees, he notes. For example, Ustream is providing free live streaming from iPhones on the Web via

a special app. The power of this form of delivery of event material was particularly evident at an event called Le Web in late 2009, where significant coverage of the event was generated by attendees with iPhones, who essentially brought the physical event onto the web. Shiao points out that this kind of connection is becoming increasingly common, and is helping to expand audiences for events substantially.

Lukazewski believes that mobile applications will “magnify the impact of social media in events.” According to him, mobile phones have been particularly effective for tweeting at events, aided by the support of many event organizers, who are openly and increasingly encouraging attendees to tweet during sessions.

Further highlighting the impact of social media via mobile phones at live events, Hurt points to the effectiveness of social media at a meeting last year of the National Association of Dental Plans. 98% of attendees at those events possessed a mobile device, and used those phones to participate in the opening session. Furthermore, 87% of the audience used social media at the event, and 500 attendees used their phones to communicate with the speakers on stage.

The audience also used social media to interact with the event organizers offsite, allowing those organizers to notify attendees about such matters as A/V problems and room changes.


Social media can play an instrumental role in building

greater brand and community awareness and strengthen

those communities around events

Case Studies of Social

Media in EventsThe following case studies highlight key strategies for effectively utilizing social media in live and hybrid events, and illustrate the growing role of social media in events. They cover the application of social media in both corporate events and “unconferences.”

Leveraging Social Media in Hybrid

Events - Cisco Live Case Study

According to Dannette Veale, Cisco Live and Networkers Strategist at Cisco, the company had considerable success with its hybrid Cisco Live customer conference event in 2009. The Cisco Live event last year drew 10,000 physical attendees, while the hybrid event drew 6,659 total attendees, of which 4,432 were virtual attendees and the remainder were in physical attendance. The hybrid event consisted of some live sessions and activities, as well as virtual experiences.

The first two days of the event, including the Keynotes, Super Sessions and technical sessions, were live. The event integrated some immersive features, including a virtual showcase of the Cisco booth onsite theatre. A live broadcast of the theatre was conducted over IP to virtual attendees, allowing them to interact with virtual presenters. The virtual version of the event (called Cisco Live and Networkers Virtual) afforded live post keynote executive chats, allowing users to engage in questions and answers with the executives via text and IP.

Cisco Live held its first Tweet-up last year with 45 individuals, who met in person. The tweet-up was designed to enable in-person connections in order to foster a greater sense of community for the individuals using Cisco’s virtual event platform and social media tools, and to promote the company’s global conferences and activities in Cisco’s virtual event platform. The company maintains a dedicated social media person on its marketing staff who organizes Twitter chats before events, which have generated increased postings to Cisco Live’s fan page. Cisco is increasingly integrating Twitter into its virtual world platform, and will be integrating Facebook soon into that platform.

Although social media drove only a handful of users to register at the physical event, it generated greater registrations at the virtual and hybrid event versions.

Cisco Live maintains a virtual environment blog, and conducted an extensive blogger outreach campaign for the 2009 event via that blog, as well as Twitter and Facebook. It solicited blog postings from users and attendees for Cisco Live. It also organized a blog night where the company invited specific influencers to participate in an evening of entertainment. The idea behind this event was to nurture a closer relationship with these influencers in order to induce them to spread the word about Cisco’s messaging and product offerings.

Cisco Live used Twitter last year for attendee communications, allowing the company to troubleshoot problems and elicit feedback on such elements as live music at the event, coffee stations, and registration procedures at hotels of the attendees. It was also employed for promotion of sponsors at the physical and virtual versions of the event, through such means as contests, and for backchannel chat by attendees. Over 1,700 tweets related to the event were recorded.

Importantly, the virtual version of the event didn’t cannibalize the physical event, as evidenced by the finding that 34% of the virtual attendees said they would be very likely or extremely likely to attend the physical Cisco Live event in 2010. In fact, the 2009 event’s mixture of virtual and physical features helped attract a wider audience- 55% of attendees to the hybrid event were new attendees.

Social Media Serves as Corner-

stone of Marketing Efforts for IBM’s

IMPACT 2009 SOA ConferenceSocial media played a critical role in supporting the goals of IBM’s IMPACT 2009 SOA Conference. According to Sandy Carter, VP of IBM Software Business Partners, it helped compensate for slashed travel budgets of potential attendees and anticipated lower attendance at a live event due to the overall effect of an economic downturn. The SOA group within IBM used a range of social media techniques to drive increased attendance, forge stronger and more enduring relationships with attendees, and generate greater business. IBM’s ultimate goal with social media at the event was to “build a community” and foster a “perpetual conversation,” explains Carter.


For the IMPACT event, IBM employed a range of strategies to broaden the event’s audience, personalize its outreach to attendees and prospective attendees, and encourage greater audience participation. Live Twitter feeds were a key part of the event. Another significant element in the social media strategy for the event was “driving attendees to post reference videos on YouTube explaining why they liked the event, and why others should attend the event,” says Carter. As a result, “750 reference videos and photos were posted on YouTube and Flickr, saving IBM $100,000 in production costs for reference videos,” she reports. IBM also led an online contest in connection with the event, “awarding prizes to the best social media content developed by attendees for the event, such as blog material, which generated tremendous attention,” according to Carter.

Results highlighted the strong impact of social media at the event and on IBM’s overall marketing activities. “10% of registrations were driven by the use of such social media tools as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook,” reports Carter. Moreover, the SOA group within IBM “achieved a 15% year over year increase in new customers through the application of social media” at the event, she claims. In addition, “the cost of the social media campaign at the event was near zero.” Overall, “that campaign led to a 46% increase in web marketing leads” for the SOA group and achieved “the lowest cost per lead for an event inside IBM,” Carter maintains.

Spawning Live Events from Online

Communities - The EventCamp

Experience

Some live events are direct byproducts of online communities, especially unconferences. A perfect example of this development is EventCamp, an event held this February in New York, which originated as an online community, points out Mike McAllen, Co-founder of Grass Shack Events & Media, and one of the event organizers. The event organizers were all part of a Twitter group, commonly known by it’s Twitter hashtag #eventprofs, which continues to meet twice weekly to discuss event topics and other issues surrounding the industry. By essentially combining a live video stream with Twitter, the

event created an intriguing and special dynamic. 100 people attended the live event, and all virtual attendees expressed a desire to attend the physical event next year. 20 blog posts were made at the event, according to Smith.

The event utilized many social networking tools, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs. McAllen emphasized the importance of establishing a special portal for events, which can draw a sizeable audience to those events.

McAllen anticipates that the next live EventCamp will be much larger, especially given the strong word-of-mouth buzz generated by this year’s event. He notes the importance of selecting a venue for live events that has the right technical infrastructure for the proper delivery of social media from those events. For example, EventCamp will be changing the venue of its next event, since it was unable to properly stream content via wi-fi at the venue it used for the last event.

Social Media in Events - The Long

Term Perspective

Kenny Lauer expects that social media will be blended more into physical events, and virtual events will become part of integrated E-mail and social media strategies of companies. Overall, these developments will reflect a greater blending of events into integrated marketing.

Rush predicts there will be “many more events within an event, with exhibitors creating microsites around events.” He believes that “more event-specific information will populate these types of sites with such content as Twitter and general event updates.” These sites will allow “exhibitors to create a buzz around events by consolidating real-time updates, news, and other content.” Rush believes social media will allow people outside of physical events to be more closely connected with physical attendees and presenters, and will afford the delivery of new product demos and other content.


"In order for social media to be effective in events, we must

create a forum to encourage audience participation.”

Social media will play an increasingly important role in more multifaceted, expansive, and fluid events that are likely to develop. Jainschigg predicts the rise of “multi-hybrid events that audiences can attend in person, via telepresence from remote theatre locations; via video on the web; through avatars in a correlated immersive 3D space; via augmented reality on iGoggles, and through asynchronous ‘event envelopes’ that extend across multiple social media and stretch out the community and buzz around events across time.” The growth of hybrid, personalized, and spontaneous events certainly augurs/presages further expansion in social media use in events.

The increasing trend of Social

Media use in events. Strong thought leadership and knowledge sharing is needed to promote the use of social media in events. As Rush observes, a growing online community of event organizers is benefiting from sharing ideas and resources regarding social media through that community. He believes that event organizers can gain considerably from building an advocacy position about social media use among their peers and event attendees prior to their events. In fact, Echelon Design has had considerable success with this advocacy approach. Traffic to its blog Tradeshow Insight, which highlights best practices and strategies for events, has jumped 300-400% since its integration with other social networks in late 2009, he reports.

The use of social media in events has certainly expanded over the past year, and its impact has become more pronounced, but it needs to be broader, better calibrated and supported to reach the next stage of growth. As a number of experts have noted, in order to extend its influence in events, social media must be properly blended into integrated marketing strategies of all kinds of organizations, not simply serve as a random add-on. Rush is confident this kind of integration will accelerate in the near future.

Many experts expect that audience-generated content will become much more common in events. Jainschigg believes this trend will accelerate partly because “tools such as Twitter will sprout” features such as ‘moderated channel APIs,’ and “because events themselves will become more immersive across all media, imposing a common etiquette for proper use and good behavior.” It will also accelerate because “analysis of that content” will

become increasingly prized for “market research” purposes, he believes.

Diverse elements will likely expand the scope of social media applications in events, such as the increased use of online games and alternate reality games in events. From this perspective, social media’s frontier in events extends far beyond its current parameters.
