QA
Q. How can social media help Arab Health exhibitors in their marketing campaigns? A. Social media could help you find influential people in your industry. In addition to maintaining your blog, make sure to keep your eyes open to what others in the industry are buzzing about online. Reading independent blogs and joining industry groups on Facebook and LinkedIn is a good way to join the larger conversation.
Q. How could exhibitors use social media effectively within a wider marketing plan? A. A Social Media Marketing Plan is designed for businesses and organisations that want to use social media marketing to build brand-awareness, influence the acceptance and promotion of products and services, generate website traffic, viral buzz and incoming links to their websites for search engine optimisation purposes.
Q. What are the tangible benefits to using social media as an exhibitor to a show as large as Arab Health? A. Firstly, learn to harness your expertise. Chances are your company’s white paper
80
www.lifesciencesmagazines.com
with Matthew Ranson, Partner & Brand Director, RANSON Branding Consultancy @RansonBranding UAE
won’t go viral. But sharing knowledge you’ve gathered through your show can go a long way toward boosting your brand. Secondly, demonstrate what your company does. Because multimedia is so integral to social media, getting connected allows you to express your company’s value proposition beyond words. To show just how powerful his company’s blenders were, Blendtec’s head of marketing, George Wright, created a series of videos showing the appliances churning up such diverse items as a rotisserie chicken, a Rubik’s Cube, and an iPhone. The series’ 100 million combined views helped boost Blendtec’s sales by 700 percent. Think what may be possible with your healthcare brand.
Q. What do exhibitors need to think about when looking to set up a social media strategy? A. Define the goals. Pick services to meet those goals, such as Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook or Foursquare. Create a hub for people to interact with you. Help people find you online. Start the process early. Be chatty. Use hashtags. Offer valuable stuff that your potential customers would want and value. Hold contests. Follow up. Track your success.
Q. What are your top tips for a successful social media strategy? A. Be human. Be interesting. Be useful. Be consistent.
Q. It’s not just leading up to the show - social media is vital both during and post show to keep clients interest alive, how can you go about doing this? A. 1. Help attendees connect with each other. 2. Encourage attendees to share information. 3. Provide recreation. Whether customising your conference on the go to meet the needs of your healthcare audience, creating media buzz or engaging participants, one thing is clear: social media has revolutionised the function of events. The recommendation is to work with someone who understands and can build
the strategy around the tools, instead of just throwing a bunch of tools together that you read about in various places. There are no shortcuts to building social media into events, but the yield from taking an intelligent approach is worth it.
Q. What are the pitfalls of social media, where can things go wrong? A. It takes time, persistence, consistency and commitment to generate results. Relationships, trust and credibility are not built overnight so be patient. Don’t start a social media campaign unless you intend to stay the course. Nothing looks worse than an outdated profile with only a handful of ‘likes’.
Q. How can one measure the success of their social media campaign? A. ROI can be financial and non-financial. Qualitative: Are you part of your industry’s conversation? How do your customers perceive you versus your competitors? Are you moving your business from monologue to dialogue? Quantitative: Monitor your website analytics. Look for social mentions. Understand your SEO ranking. How many newsletter subscribers do you have? You can find other ideas by reading ‘The 10 Social Media Metrics Your Company Should Monitor on the RANSON blog: http://
www.ranson.co/category/blog
Q. How much investment is needed to set up successful social media? A. That depends. Think about the time needed to create a meaningful campaign and ongoing strategy. Think about the branding and design of your organisation or company – is it reflective of your future ambitions? Do you plan to use social media advertising? If you need advise, think about the possible investment to bring in a consultant or company to help you. ■
AH
MORE INFO: For more information on social media and branding, visit
www.ranson.co or follow them on Twitter: @RansonBranding
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