How to use social media to add value to your ICCA Congress? – Part 2: What to share?

The previous blog post elaborated on how to make use of the different social media channels to add value to your ICCA Congress experience. You might think, yes, Mathijs, this all sounds very nice, but how to put this to action? What should I post?

Gerrit Heijkoop’s (of ICCA member How Can I Be Social) “5  L’s” provide a very useful rule of thumb to help write valuable and relevant Social Media updates . I hope this will give you some inspiration to join the #ICCAWorld Congress conversation:

How to use social media to add value to your ICCA Congress?

Last year’s ICCA Congress propelled on social media (See related press release  and “15 Reasons ICCA had tremendous Twitter traffic at the 2014 Congress”). While on average 10-20% of delegates at a conference or tradeshow are active on Twitter, almost 60% of ICCA Congress delegates were active on Twitter before, during or after the ICCA Congress.

How to make the most of this opportunity and use social media to increase your ICCA Congress experience?

ICCA members’ press releases part 2 – topics and creativity

We viewed and categorized a total of 48 press releases published on the ICCA website in July to share some observations.

The majority of texts introduce changes in infrastructure, new developments, strategies and concepts – 19 % of the 48 July releases are in context with sustainability matters in one way or the other.
Announcements of congresses won and awards/competitions are the other topics used for the releases. Some articles fit into more than 1 category; hence the majority of press releases are on the factual rather than on the inspiring – story-telling – side.

Social media for events: #ICCAAES 2015 presentation

Really enjoyed presenting the case study of the social media activities around our 2014 ICCA Congress as a humble keynote speaker at the ICCA Association Expert Seminar (#ICCAAES) last weekend.

Thank you beautiful #ICCAAES participants! Glad to talk social media for events with you. #ICCAWorld pic.twitter.com/2wAGdBRUVZ

— Mathijs Vleeming (@MathijsV) May 17, 2015

Here’s the presentation on Slideshare:

15 Reasons ICCA had tremendous Twitter traffic at the 2014 Congress

 

Before bragging about these numbers let me just make this clear: Just having great Twitter statistics is not the goal of our social media efforts. The aim of using Twitter for most participants is to bookmark and share great content (of education sessions), to inspire thinking by colleagues in the meetings industry, and to meet new people. It is not about social media, it is about connectivity.

The objectives of our social media activities for the ICCA Congress are:

• Increasing the value of the Congress for members
• Increasing interaction and connectivity between members, before, during and after the event
• Showing members that are not going what they are missing
• Online ICCA profiling to our other target groups: potential members, associations, press

Numbers

You cannot reach these goals without having great Twitter statistics, so here comes the bragging: These are the stats of our current live report which represents the total number of Tweets with hashtag #ICCAWorld from 23 September until Friday 28 November:

Social Media & Events Report 2014: The meetings industry increases its social media activities

How is the meetings industry using social networks for event marketing? ICCA once again was a media partner for XING EVENTS’ (before: amiando) annual Social Media & Events Survey. Beginning in April until the end of June 2014 XING EVENTS surveyed about 2,000 event organisers in order to learn how organisers utilize social media as a marketing instrument, what the latest trends and where the biggest challenges lie:

New social media toolkit released by Tourism Research Australia

Australia’s most successful and growing regional events are using social media platforms to create strong event attendance and reputation. By connecting their events to communities of interest, they create networks of advocates and take the pressure off marketing budgets.

amiando’s Social Media & Events Report 2013

Check out amiando’s new Social Media & Events Report 2013, which was published today and for which ICCA is a media partner again:

http://blog.amiando.com/2013-08-14/social-media-events-report-2013-how-is-the-event-industry-using-social-networks/

Over the last few years, the report has become a must read among event organisers and is considered as an important source of information on the subject of social media in the event industry.

New “Social Media for Meetings” Publication now available!

Social media is here to stay and has drastically changed the media landscape in just a few years. Facebook now has 1.06 billion monthly active users, Twitter has 500 million total users, LinkedIn has 200 million users, Google+ has 343 million users, and the social web keeps on changing and growing in a fast pace. The widespread use of social media has fundamentally changed how people communicate and share information. Social media provides new opportunities for personal and direct interaction with your audience, increased exposure and improved online search results. Instead of only sending one way messages to our target audience we are expected to engage in two-way communication. Social media form a natural extension for the meetings industry, as it facilitates an online extension of the offline discussion at a meeting. Studies performed by amiando (www.amiando.com) in 2011 and 2012 shows that the meetings industry is quickly embracing social media.

Starting out with social media might seem a daunting task, and you might think that you’ve already missed the bandwagon. But don’t worry, although social media is indeed skyrocketing and new social sites seem to be appearing every day, in the end this is actually good news for you! Why, you might wonder? Because now for the first time, you have the possibility to reach out to hundreds and thousands of (potential) attendees! With the right social media strategy in place you too can harness the power of social media and turn your next meeting into a success both offline and online!

The new ICCA Association Resource Publication “Social Media for Meetings”, which has just been published, will help you to define the social media landscape of your meeting and gives you practical tips for developing a strategy on how to start using social media to facilitate an online discussion before, during and after your upcoming meetings.

#icca12 Case study social media for events: from follower to sender to moderator

As two-thirds of the ICCA Congress delegates are senior level CEOs and Managing Directors, many of them are of an older age group, which provides a challenge for the implementation of social media around our annual Congress and GA.

In 2010 we only followed and slightly moderated the online discussion around the ICCA Congress in Hyderabad, India. In 2011, when we first started to roll out more extensive social media activities we were primarily sending messages and trying to get delegates engaged, but we still only had a small group of early adopters who actively contributed to the online discussion (See also #icca11 Case study social media for events).

At this year’s 52nd ICCA Congress in San Juan, Puerto Rico we had many more delegates who actively contributed useful ICCA Congress related content via our social media channels. This meant that for a large part our role has changed from “follower” to “sender” to “moderator”.

So why were more delegates active on social media during this year’s ICCA Congress, despite the fact that we had 700 delegates compared to 1,000 last year? Is this just a natural evolution, as there are now more social media users in general? Or did we do a good job in actively managing and stimulating the online discussion?