Social listening is a priceless development that all brands, events, and industries need to be adopting. Whilst we know how useful it can be for brands in terms of measuring campaign success, reputation management amongst other highly valuable insights, it can also be used for event tracking. By this we mean following the pre, during and post online conversations surrounding an event, evaluating the success of your brand present at the event ie were people interacting with your ads, were they responding to sponsor related tweets? With social listening, we can track online conversation surrounding your brand at a certain event and thus help you to measure your ROI and evaluate individual or collective campaign success.
Monitoring the event itself is crucial of course, but it is the event flow from beginning to end which will enable you to capture the overall online event feedback, interactions, and community growth etc.
Following the initial pre-event buzz through Social Listening means being able to detect what topics, talks and parts of the events people are most looking forward to and or are promoting most. On top of that you’ll be able to see if specific influencers are promoting your brand content, especially useful if you’re an event sponsor, for detecting whether your brand is getting the exposure it needs to make the campaign successful and achieve a higher Social Media ROI as well as who your main brand ambassadors are or could be.
When the event comes around you’ll not only be equipped with more crucial information on some of those attendees you can engage more easily with to create buzz, but you also have the ability to respond in real-time to ongoing event talks, responses to your content and brand materials at the event as well as tag it for a later date. We also know everyone loves to share different comments and feedback on different social media, so with a Social Listening tool you can track and respond to these all at the same time and in one place - social efficiency at it’s finest.
Capturing that post-event buzz is also just as important. People will discuss their favourite moments, talks, products (if applicable) and sometimes even why they loved it. If you are sponsoring an event it is particularly helpful in detecting your potential audience, brand exposure, and total reach over the event period, where it peaked and where it fell so you can fully capture what worked well on the social media side against the cost of the campaign etc.
Figuring the top trends throughout the event unless a topic is actually trending on Twitter or blowing up Facebook through high Share of Voice levels can be difficult, with a Social Media Monitoring tool you can track the specific topics really topping the tables during an event, defining them clearly, excluding sources and buzz words which might cause noise. This will enable you to have a more accurate reflection of whether the top trends and topics fitted in with the overall feel and fit of your campaign and or event, as well as pinpointing the exact conversations that were causing the buzz for specific keywords.
Discovering the top speakers can work in two ways; firstly you can identify who is or was tweeting most consistently throughout the event or creating the most buzz. In terms of evaluation, this may already be one of your brand ambassadors in which case you know you are getting a better reach, but if it’s not, it highlights potential brand ambassadors using your brand logo in posts and images, even when they don't mention it in the accompany text or mention, which could actively work alongside your specific campaign or consistently on different projects.
The second way you can use this feature of Social Listening effectively is to see the most talked about speakers. Through this, you can detect who is engaging at the highest level with clients, consumers and also prospects. If your prospects find certain speakers most inspiring or feel more of connection with them it indicates good influencer relationships to strike up to reach consumers, specialists and new target markets at ground -level. Additionally, you can monitor to top performing social channels, so you can target your audience more specifically, where they are.
An official hashtag is a great way to track conversations happening around your event if well promoted and clearly advertised before and throughout the attendees will know the right hashtag to use if they are looking to gleam more overall exposure at the event. However, let’s face it not everyone is going to use your hashtag, so what will happen to all this lost buzz? With a Social Media Monitoring tool, you can set the tool to pick up more buzz than just the hashtag, so you can see those conversations happening under the surface too. Track the speaker Twitter tags, accounts, key event topics, and other buzzwords to get the fuller picture.
If attendees are looking for some support about what to expect on the day, finding the location, sorting out logistical problems such as sorting their event pass you can step in to save the day or simply point them in the right direction to resolve the problem. With the tool, you can set up keywords such as ‘help’, ‘problem’ ‘lost’ etc so you can receive alerts when someone is in need of your help or customer service support before, during or after your event so you can answer in real-time efficiency. On top of this it also gives you an indication of event attendees, so you can connect pre-event, set up meetings and prepare in advance to potentially qualify leads ahead of your competitors.
Feedback, buzz, top performers, most interactions, most successful posts and much more are all are Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you want to be tracking throughout an event.
Once you’ve collected the data, worked on it throughout the event process you’re going to want to do deep analysis in order to evaluate the success of a campaign or event, what worked, what didn’t and match it up with your budget and other strategic business decisions. Within this, you will be able to assess peoples' reaction, both positive and negative to your event. Whether they loved the talks, didn't like the food, got annoyed by waiting in line to check-in or simply the bad quality speakers - it will all be there within the tool's platform for you to breakdown and figure out for the next event.
A Social Listening tool is key to having all this data in one place and in real-time so you can track to the minute the event peak and fall and successfully complete your event tracking and shape your future event marketing strategies.
Interested in tracking your event with a Social Media Monitoring tool?
Why not try out Digimind Social for free.