7 Tips for Event Social Media Marketing

By Keith Moehring | Posted Jul 14, 2009 | 3 Comment(s) | Filed in: Social Media

In May 2008, it was announced that the 2009 Senior PGA Championship would be coming to Cleveland, May 18-24. Our PR firm was selected to manage the local media relations. To support our event marketing plan, we recommended launching a social media campaign to help generate awareness and build excitement by giving fans a behind-the-scenes look at a major golf championship.

We got approval in mid January and launched the campaign on February 2, three months and 16 days before the event. We included the following social media tools:

• Twitter — @SeniorPGA2009 
• Blog — www.SeniorPGA2009.Wordpress.com 
• Flickr — www.flickr.com/photos/seniorpga2009 (Flickr was used for only part of the campaign, as event photos were eventually posted to the event Website. Most Twitter pictures were added to our yfrog account.)

This opportunity afforded us the chance to test some industry best practices for successfully launching and building a social media campaign centered on an event. Based off this experience, we recommend keeping the following in mind when launching your own event-based social media campaign.

1. Take the Integrated Approach

The old saying a rising tide lifts all boats is an apt one, especially for social media activities. At every opportunity we tried to integrate our Twitter account with the blog and vice versa. Blog articles served as source material for tweets and in turn, Twitter was the second highest driver of traffic to the blog, behind only the event Website.

2. Link from the Event Website 

Ideally, we would have hosted the blog on the event Website’s domain, but do to circumstances out of our control, we had to resort to hosting it on WordPress.com.

If you have to use WordPress or Typepad, we can’t over stress the importance of including a link from the event Website to the blog, as well as all other social media activities. It was not until the event site linked to the blog in early May that we really started to see traffic jump, from both the event site as well as search engines. The link gave the blog credibility in the eyes of search engines, and consequently it started to rank much higher for a number of keywords.

3. Take a Natural/Organic Approach to Building Followers

The most efficient way to build followers is to monitor others’ Tweets and participate in the conversation. With every retweet, it was like we were being featured in front of that person’s fan base.

However, since our timeframe was small, we needed to actively reach out to other Twitter users to gain a good following. We set a goal of 500 followers by the start of Championship week.

We used several online tools, including TwitterGrader.com’s search function and search.twitter.com. One thing we kept in mind is that users are more inclined to follow you if there is not a huge discrepancy between those you are following and those following you. We spread out our pushes to gain followers, and made sure we were within at least 200 the entire time.

Over the three months leading up to the tournament, we (in order of occurrence):

• Researched and followed Clevelanders who listed golf in their profiles (Twitter Grader) — Least Successful
• Researched and followed Ohioans who listed golf in their profiles (Twitter Grader)
• Researched and followed Ohio and Cleveland sport fans (Twitter Grader)
• Researched and followed golf Twitterers with the best Twitter Grades (Twitter Grader)
• Started following all professional golf tournaments
• Monitored and followed all Twitterers discussing “golf,” “PGA,” “Senior PGA,” and various player names. (search.twitter.com) — Most Successful
• Reviewed the followers of other professional golf tournaments and started following them

We were able to attract 908 followers in a three month window.

4. Show and Tell

In order to gauge what our Twitter followers wanted to see from our event coverage, we posted a tweet asking them. The overwhelming answer was pictures — images they can’t see on TV or in the newspapers. This was consistent with the answers another Champions Tour event (@RegionsCharity) got when they asked their followers the same question.

Leading up to the event, we posted pictures of clubhouse and course construction, media day, practice rounds and player arrivals. During the event, we showed pictures of players, the course, media interviews, putting green, driving range and fans getting autographs. Each picture we posted to Twitter would get between 20 to 30 views, with player photos generating the most traffic.

On Flickr, the most popular photo album was from media day, which involved a press conference, golf, a chipping contest on Progressive Field and the returning champion throwing out the first pitch.

5. There’s no “I” in Blog

During the early months, you may only need one person managing the social media campaign, since there is only so much to discuss. However, as the event nears, the more responsibilities you’ll have, thus the less time to monitor, participate and publish. Unfortunately, this coincides with the time people really take an active interest in the event.

Our recommendation is to team up and assign specific topics to each member. Someone can be responsible for interview quotes (also a big draw), another for event recaps and another for interesting facts and figures. By teaming up, everyone knows their responsibility and can focus on one area instead of spreading one person too thin.

6. Start Early

Launch your campaign as early as possible. We launched ours three months and 16 days from the start of Championship week. This is a very small window to develop strategies, generate followers and build relationships.

As with anything, there is a learning curve — time needed to figure out and form relationships with the influentials, determine what topics resonate best with audiences and define posting and updating strategies and processes.

7. Get Creative and Bookmark It

One of our most successful blog posts was also the most fun to write. The 2009 Senior PGA Championship was hosted at Canterbury Golf Club, which shares its name with Geoffrey Chaucer’s epic poem — The Canterbury Tales.

His work begins with a prologue introducing all the characters and explaining why they are headed to Canterbury. We decided to write our own prologue, and the resulting monstrosity (The Canterbury Tale: Senior PGA Prologue) stretched the term “poetry” to its absolute limits. However, it was Stumbled and ended up generating the highest one-day blog traffic total up to that point.

We’d love to hear from anyone who has had similar experiences or can offer any insight further into this topic.

Keith Moehring is a consultant at PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency and PR firm. Follow Keith on Twitter @keithmoehring.