What happens to the Social buzz after an event like SXSW?
The answer is that the buzz just continues of course! Long after the stands have gone down and been packed away and shipped off. People are still interested in chatting about what they have seen. I have looked at the activity that follows major events for the last few weeks. I was impressed with the amount of activity that still continues weeks afterwards even for much smaller B2B events than SXSW. It is a very fertile period, and you can make the most of it using Social media.
Expand your coverage
Consider extending your coverage to include this “after phase” – budget permitting of course! Maybe there are business opportunities to still exploit in this period? As well as the “did you miss this” type of messages, throw in the odd closure “call to action” so that you can exploit those that are taking some while to decide on what they want to do following the event or campaign. Some people may need a few days or a couple of weeks to recover from the information overload. Events can be very intensive, especially if you include the stress and strain from traveling. It is understandable that many people are likely to make decisions in the days and weeks following an event.
An example – #SXSW
Let’s look at a recent example, the SXSW event. The hashtag was #SXSW. In this test the event had finished 19 days ago, but the reach of the tweets containing the #SXSW hashtag was still 273,547 in a random selected time period. Remember that the time period selected was not hours after the event but 19 days. The reach of 273,547 was for a random selected 3 hour time period 19 days after the event. That is an impressive figure. I used a tool called tweetreach.com at that time to generate that report. You can do this with any similar tool these days.
Include other channels.
The example I gave above is just based on Twitter activity. The reach and exposure would no doubt be bigger if Linkedin and other closed specialist community groups were added in as well, particularly if the event was centered on a B2B theme, or a regulated industry like finance.
This is the way Social Media should be used!
Make sure that your event strategy includes the activity that happens in the “after phase”. Try to plan for activities that would follow events that could involve your newly acquired engaged audience. Think further than just continuing the dialogue. Why not use them in follow up actions to the event as a crowdsource? You could also consider the long tail effect, using an event to strike up relationships that continue on for months. That is indeed, the intention of relationship building via Social media!
Image credit: Apple’s Eyes Studio / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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