Ted Rubin, Chief Social Marketing Officer at Collective Bias™ was recently named by Social Media Marketing magazine as the most followed CMO on Twitter — where he has over 82,000 followers. He recently shared with BizBash magazine the ways he is using social media to build relationships and brand awareness and how this strategy can also be applied to meetings and events.
Below are the highlights from the article, in particular, some effective ways event meeting services organizations can integrate Twitter into their meeting participation strategy.
Rubin has coined the term "Return on Relationship" which he defines in the following way:
ROR is the value (both perceived and real) that will accrue over time through loyalty, recommendations, and sharing. It is about building relationships, emotional connections, trust, and loyalty.
Social channels can help event organizers promote the event before, during, and after the meeting. Here are some of his suggestions:
- Attendees can post information on Twitter and Facebook weeks before the event;
- Pictures can be uploaded to Facebook;
- Guest bloggers can blog about the event and the blog can be pushed to social channels;
- The creation of the hashtag on Twitter is what Rubin calls a "town circle" where everyone has the commonality of participating in the same event.
Rubin believes that Twitter is the best way to network and start a relationship at a face-to-face event. The hashtag (such as #AMA2012) easily identifies your event and attendees can put that hashtag into the search box in Twitter and see all the comments or questions. Twitter also has an excellent search engine so event organizers and attendees can search about the event itself, speakers or sponsors.
He suggests the following Twitter tips:
- Ask attendees for their Twitter handle on the registration form.
- Create a hashtag for the event and make it simple and easy for people to remember.
- Follow every person who uses that hashtag.
- If someone retweets your tweet, "tweet" it again.
- Thank people for retweets and for tweeting about the event.
- Reply to people by their name; it makes them feel you are paying attention to them.
- Actively tweet during the sessions, using the event hashtag.
Even though Rubin is extremely social media savvy, in the end he believes social channels only help you get to know someone better when you finally meet them in person. He is a big proponent of face-to-face meetings and finds social to be just the ticket to get to know them better.
How can AV Event Solutions help make your next event more social? Here are 3 offerings that can help:
- Rent iPads and pre-load them with social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook. Second and Third generation iPads have a camera installed within the device allowing an easy upload to social channels.
- Video Wall rentals can allow attendees see live tweets, video feed of a presentation and photos from the event.
- Wi-Fi network arrays will make certain the Internet bandwidth is fast, secure and robust. The last thing attendees want to experience is a slow or intermittent Wi-Fi connection.
Contact AV Event Solutions for all your interactive technology tool rental needs for your next meeting, event or trade show!
