So when we attended an industry event last week on digital marketing (we continue to keep ourselves informed of the latest trends in our own industry… Digital Summit Philly was the most recent), we started posting live updates of the session topics on Facebook and Twitter. We recommend our clients do this at their industry events, and we like to put our money where our mouth is.
Little did we realize just how effective this would be!
Reviewing Social Media Metrics
Throughout the day we have a handful of relevant stats, quotes and images posted… and we start to see the metrics rolling in. The posts pass a few hundred impressions and we get excited. By the end of the first afternoon, we’re passing a few thousand and begin to think maybe it’s a fluke. By the next morning and throughout the rest of the second day of the event, we’re approaching 10,000 impressions on some of the posts… Now it’s a party!
Checking our Facebook Insights after the event, our reach on the first day of the event increased by 118,000%. Not 10%, not even 1000%… One Hundred Thousand percent!
Every single one of our Facebook posts from those 2 days has at least 20 times more impressions than our average posts. Plus, our top tweet during the event had 10 times more impressions than our last tweet prior to the event. Our tweet impressions over the last month increased by over 1300%.
Now we’re not trying to brag, but to demonstrate a point. Was the conference we attended explaining anything new and truly revolutionary? No, not really. It was informative and educational, sure; it reinforced some of the concepts we already knew as well as debunked some old wives’ tales of the industry and kept us informed about the latest trends. But the info that we were sharing on social media was nothing that would have uprooted any marketer’s worldview.
This is the same for our clients when they attend their own industry events. Most of the time, we’re learning from our peers’ trials and errors as well as discussing the latest trends. Rarely does anything truly groundbreaking happen live at the event.
So why are we emphasizing this point? To show that what we were posting was nothing so amazing that anyone else couldn’t have done it (and we know plenty of other attendees were doing the same thing). Then what was different? Why were these posts performing so much better than our previous social media content?
How to Increase Social Media Engagement
Like any question asked in this business, the answer is, “many reasons.”
Posting more frequently.
Our regular posts go out a few times a month. This was a post every hour of the event for 2 days. Our name was out there more often. This is a Marketing 101 essential tip. We were there. We were making our presence known in that space at that time.
Timing.
Not time of day, which obviously it does help that it was during normal business hours, but it was timed to an event that was a major player in the industry happenings at the time. People who couldn’t attend the conference or were in another session (3 sessions were running simultaneously) could review the major themes, stats and quotes from the day quickly to stay informed.
Hashtags!
Relevant hashtags, including and most especially the conference’s specific hashtag, were on every post. People searching for information about the event saw everything we posted. Trending hashtags get more views… that’s pretty much why they’re trending!
Tagging speakers.
The people and companies presenting at these sessions are the industry leaders. If your company isn’t well-known enough to be one of these presenters, then associating yourself with the leaders is the next best thing. Connect yourself digitally with those companies.
Our reach increased on Facebook by over 30,000% for the week (118,000% was for one day), our post engagement increased by 380% and followers increased by 12%. Our tweet impressions increased by over 1300%, followers increased by 10% and we had more retweets in 2 days than we have had the last 2 months.
For us, these social media posts were about branding and putting our company out there as a marketing industry expert. Our goal wasn’t website traffic or new client inquiries immediately following the event. However, the next event we attend, we could strategize a little differently beforehand to make those our goals. Our posts might look a little different then, but live tweeting and posts on Facebook during industry events will definitely stay in the mix for the foreseeable future.