Social Media Meets Tradeshows: a perfect match

So, you have heard social media builds brand, creates buzz about your company and can add communication channels directly to customers. Did you know you can greatly enhance this process around a trade conference or special event?

We have found that the social media activities that utilize these three principles yield results:

What to talk about, who to follow, who to retweet (repost).

What to talk about and how you say it matters. First, make sure your message corresponds with the reason for attending and/or exhibiting. Are you introducing new products, holding demonstrations at your booth or targeting a specific attendee? Consider short posts such as Demonstration: floor coating for contract mfg. facilities, booth 312, 3 pm. Or, see the Wonka 2000 at booth #4511. The latest in confection development. You can also promote special drawings, traffic building programs or key events such as press conferences and speaking engagements.

The next tactic is specifically designed to expand your social media universe (or in old terms, your audience). We suggest following all journalists and media participating in the conference. Simply following them puts your firm (and your Twitter handle) on their radar. Also, see who else is posting. Target the circle of influence folks. Yes, they exist here too. These are the ones that are posting relevant material, have many followers and that others have also chosen to repost (their content). You may not want to follow competitors, but other noncompeting exhibitors at the show are great. They will appreciate the follow, may follow you back and even consider reposting your content.

So, this brings us to reposting. In the Twitter-verse, this is called Re-tweeting (the original post being a tweet). Facebook, LinkedIn and even Google+  have joined the game as well. We use any and all of these properties during our client’s social media campaigns. Want more followers (audience)? Be the organization that actively retweets others content. If they are having a press conference at their booth, retweet it. They will appreciate it and most likely return the favor on your posts. This applies to coveted media who are also posting at the conference.

Bonus: How in the world do you know who is posting what during a 72 hour event? Ever seen this #? It’s called a hashtag (as in this blog post is #informative). A hashtag is used to create a simple search tool for those in the know. Check the conference website and I bet they have established one for the show. They are free, no one has to register them and they can be about anything. We created #commercialmaintenance for our client @Bldg_Maint. We add this to posts and people are starting to adopt it for their post. Setup a search and you will see every post for your conference (if they are using the hashtag). Note, those in the know and ones on the cutting edge, a small population, will be here. You will be playing with the top communicators in your industry. Lastly, and most importantly, you need to be monitoring these activities hourly during your conference. We have many tools we use to do this for our clients and often coordinate this tactic so they can concentrate on their speaking engagement and the visitors to their booth. Happy tweeting!

Rob Felber, President of Felber Public Relations & Marketing is responsible for the development and implementation of measurable advertising and public relations campaigns for manufacturers.  RobFelber@felberpr.com or (330) 963-3664