Andy’s Answers: How the National Association of Realtors used social to take conventions to a bigger audience
The National Association of Realtors hosts two big conferences a year. One brings in 10,000 attendees; the other tops out at about 20,000.
But the association has 1.1 million members. Although those attendance numbers are big, there’s a significant number of members who don’t make the conferences.
In his recent BlogWell presentation, the association’s Todd Carpenter walked us through how the group used a small investment in social media coverage to earn a 10-fold increase in traffic and take events to a much bigger audience.
A few of Carpenter’s take-aways:
- Recruit a few talkers to share their experience. The National Association of Realtors created a blog on which select attendees can share their conference experience. It got these members more involved and meant this content was shared with their large social following.
- Facebook photos allow for a real-time feel. Carpenter and his team made it easy for attendees to share photos via Facebook, which created more of a “live” feeling compared with a website such as Flickr, on which attendees tend to upload photos after they get home (if they upload them at all).
- Think about the next event. Not only did all of this content take the association’s conferences to a bigger audience, but it also gave the group tools to promote its next big event.
Watch Carpenter’s case study. Slides are available.
Posted by @cmlitster on August 15th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
Excellent insight! Social media can extend the impact of an event both during and post-event, increasing engagement level with attendees and those unable to attend. But don't forget the importance of using social media to promote the event in the first place. You can build buzz and excitement by promoting what attendees can expect at your event, or by talking about how successful registrations have been (for instance, announcing there are a limited number of seats left, if that's actually the case). Alternatively, you can use social media posts to let people know if there are a few last-minute seats available for those who still want to attend but may have originally missed out on tickets.
Thanks,
Chris Litster
VP / GM, Event Marketing Business
Constant Contact
Posted by Brennan on August 15th, 2011 at 4:59 pm
I agree. I think that creating a virtual flurry of social media engagement can really benefit almost any industry trying to build buzz around its promotions.