Association Insight International & European Association Insights Winter 2015

Association Insights Association Success Story NETWORK Project Successful use of social media to increase engagement before, during and after an event Project dates Membership, Events, Leadership, Marketing, Partnerships / Alliances September – Mid December 2014 Association Associations Network Members 16,000 members worldwide, employees of professional, scientiﬁc, medical and business associations, societies, federations and other membership organisations Project team Victoria Watt, Marketing Manager, Associations Network (lead), Lynsey Sweales, CEO, Socialb and Eleanor Bougie, Account Executive, Socialb Objectives Demonstrate that the targeted audience was on the social media channels Show that even if people are not able to attend an event, we can still engage with them and show value Demonstrate that it doesn’t take much time to implement a social media campaign Show that the conversation doesn’t need to start at the event only, but before, and continue during and after We concentrated on Twitter as this was an easy audience to ﬁnd and engage with Before starting, the website traffic driven from Twitter was low, there was no engagement Introduction We wanted to see how social media could be used effectively within the UK Associations Congress, as part of the marketing mix to increase awareness, engage with key inﬂuencers and drive people to the website for the up and coming event. Background We set up and used Twitter and LinkedIn for previous Association Congresses but never really had a plan in place in how to use these tools as part of the wider objectives of the organisation. Social media carries a wealth of useful contacts but we didn’t harness this. Activities Running the Associations Network Twitter page: » Setting up searches for CEO’s/directors, members and associations themselves » Sorting into Twitter lists to make searching for target audience easier » Used the hashtag #ACUK14 to promote Associations Congress UK 2014 with every tweet » Used #FF (Follow Friday) to welcome new followers, congress speakers and exhibitors » Tweeted speaker articles, LinkedIn discussions, speaker and exhibitor info and relevant news stories to drum up interest for ACUK14 » Live tweeted the two days of ACUK2014, including the congress awards » ReTweeted valuable feedback and mentions at ACUK14, from associations, unions and societies that were in attendance » Promoted #AskAssns hour, and live tweeted throughout to answer the questions that were coming through from around the world Set up Hootsuite targeted searches to monitor relevant conversations in the lead up to ACUK14 Partners SocialB were the social media experts who worked closely with us. www.associationsnetwork.org Winter 2015 | 31

Association Insight International & European Association Insights Winter 2015 | Page 31