SUMMARY:

To develop and execute a social media strategy that supports the goals and objectives of the annual trade show, while separately supporting the membership goals of the association.

1. PROBLEM

It was learned that there were no attribution systems setup to align with the business goals and objectives set.

2. CONTEXT

Through an early discovery phase, it was learned that there was a large team of stakeholders with multiple and sometimes competing goals. The resources of each team were limited and highly prioritized,  and each group had distinct historical expectations of how social media works generally from a traditional communications/PR perspective, but none had a solution to meet those goals that was measurable.

3. SOLUTION

A comprehensive social media strategy was designed to provide direct attribution to new registrations to the event from social media platforms while segmenting tracking to new member leads for the association.

• Goals & Objectives – Dedicate specific attribution from social to trade show registrations.
• Platforms – The platforms were focused to engage with the following audiences: attendees, exhibitors and media using a consistently branded theme.
• Content – Content became restructured from a general announcement board to a conversational approach using past, present and future educational knowledge and stories exclusive for each community to engage with using multiple inputs from user feedback, listening technology and relevant industry conversations.
• Monitoring – Using Radian6, multiple stakeholders were designated as leads who had a shared responsibility to monitor and engage with conversations relating to the trade show and the industry.
• Engagement – Engagement changed from simple responding to proactive engagement with our audience by taking actions to be more involved with them including surfacing curated content.
• Reporting – Reporting reflected event registrations segmented by platform and device as well as lead generation for exhibitors.

4. TACTICS

• The social media platforms were redesigned to include a consistent campaign look and feel so they resembled all of the other marketing and communication channels using the same branding. The role of each platform became differentiated to each audience and purpose of communications.
  • Facebook – Educational information & trivia
  • Twitter – Registration, news and educational information
  • YouTube – Educational material for attendees and exhibitors
  • LinkedIn – Exhibitor facing communications
  • Google+ – Detailed engagement with specific audiences using circles
  • Weibo – Engaged with Chinese audience using tactics from Facebook & Twitter in the United States, but in Mandarin.
  • Blog – Consumer & Business facing communications around industry categories and key milestones for the event
  • The goals were measured using tracking codes via click-through links with associate trade show event registration vendor from the official International CES social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, Weibo and the blog, Digital Digest
• The content structure, themes and cadence were modified and planned in advance so that as each day built on a particular theme that supported a departmental wide editorial process so that all teams were in sync leveraging existing content within the archives of the organization.
  • Themes –
    • Trivia Tuesday (Trivia to test your knowledge)
    • Throwback Thursday (Memories to remember)
    • Flickr Friday (Visuals that inspire)
  • Categories
    • Audio, Photography, Television, Computers, Tablets, Mobile Phones, Video Games
• The monitoring and engagement was conducted using the Radian6 console, where we listened and engaged with relevant external discussions with our fans and influencers that were not happening on our platforms.
  • Who – Influencers & Brand partners
  • What – Listening to conversations relevant to the show and the industry categories listed above.
  • Where – It was discovered that multiple channels including Weibo needed to be strategically added to the social footprint of the organization.
  • When – We learned when top conversations took place within categories and topics that had strategic importance to the goals of the organization.
• Reporting was created to expand beyond vanity metrics such as reach and engagement around audience development and content performance to share of conversations, volume, sentiment, and registrations.

5. RETURN

• Registrations – Increased trade show registrations YoY by 3% from Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn.
• Reach & Engagement –
  • Grew CES Facebook page overall fan reach by 65% to 48k fans, and 744% to 509k impressions, engagement by 1,200% to 1,000 discussions per month and increased volume of content by 525% to 50+ posts per month.
  • Increased Twitter reach by 16% to 22,000 followers and 1,472% to 680,000 impressions, engagement by 78% to 110, and increased volume of content by 339% to 260+ Tweets over a period of 6-months.
• Share of conversation & Volume – Drove brand’s share of conversation compared to overall industry by 10% to a volume of 6,035 discussions in 6 months.
• Sentiment – Raised positive brand sentiment by 633% with the majority of discussions 98% positive over a period of 6-months.