Social Media: Not Just For Geeks Anymore
How are events using social media? What levels of adoption should events expect? What are the common strategies and best practices?
To answer these questions, we recently conducted extensive event industry research.
We gathered data from more than 600 event professionals and hundreds of events – both large and small. Thanks to all of those who shared their experience and insights!
Here are the top 8 key insights from the research:
1. Social Media has gone mainstream – 80% of events utilize some form of social media.
2. Social Media is not just for tech geeks. All types of industries and market segments – from association and medical to communications and industrial machinery events – are figuring out how to best use social media for their events.
3. Social Media Strategy is all over the map – common strategies range from Community Building to Marketing to Experimentation to No Strategy.
4. Facebook and Twitter are the leading public platforms – 54% of events utilize both Facebook and Twitter. Despite it’s business-orientation, LinkedIn surprisingly trails the more consumer-focused alternatives.
5. Mobile is key – Event attendees show higher mobile adoption than the general population
6. It’s easy to get started – Most common posting frequency is 2-3 times per week or weekly for public social media.
7. Most common content areas – Event, industry and exhibitor/sponsor news as well as registration-related posts.
8. Most significant needs – 70%+ events want better attendee/exhibitor search/browse tools; 50%+ want advance meeting scheduling tools. If we do say so ourselves, this is where ZeristaPRO comes in.
Additional data and insights are available here:
Click here to download the detailed report on Event Social Media Adoption and Strategies.
Your thoughts? Are you surprised by any of the findings? Is there something that you would like to know more about?
Photo courtesy of Columbia Pictures, modified by Jennifer Gargotto
