Examples of Social Media

BEST

ISTRATEGY iStrategyconference.com From London to San Diego to Melbourne, #iStrategy is a hashtag with which mar- keters are familiar. GDS International’s biannual iStrategy events — one- to two-day digital-marketing conferences

— allow senior marketing executives to collaborate and stay on the bleeding edge of innovation in their field. Utiliz- ing Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+, GDS engages audiences both on- and off-site. A tweet wall livestreams attendees’ tweets, so everyone can be included in the online conversations. In addition, there’s a major incentive to participate and use social media as much as possible at iStrategy: the iScars, the Oscars of digital marketing. GDS awards ‘iScars’ for the best use of social media,

said John Whitehurst, GDS Interna- tional’s head of marketing and iStrategy, in the categories of “best picture, best answer to the question of the day, and most retweeted tweet.” Each confer- ence draws top speakers in the industry worldwide, while maintaining a focus on the local market in which the event is held. With only hundreds in attendance, the “social-media activity,” Whitehurst said, “reaches around 18 million people for each event.”

IBM PULSE 2013 ibm.com Social Roulette, anyone? Between the social-media concierges who addressed attendees’ social-media needs and the livestreaming Instagram walls, there was nothing ordinary about the

social-media strategy at IBM Pulse, held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, March 3–6. For newbies to the social-media scene, IBM hosted a game of Social Roulette, where first-timers earned points for participation and got to spin a roulette wheel for prizes on the last day of the conference. “We work to create a 360-degree experience that’s fully inte- grated with the conference, with their messaging, and the experience,” said Jill Drury, CEO of Drury Design Dynam- ics, who works with IBM to establish social-media-engagement strategies at its events. “We try to create an experience that will drive social traffic both on- and off-site.” On site at Pulse, an event that draws thousands of IBM customers and industry experts annually, a social- media host (an IBM podcast personal- ity) managed all questions and polls for the attendees, and informed them of things happening at the convention. IBM also broadcasted important tweets on a 120-foot-long screen. “We really strategize with our client,” Drury said, “to make sure the information that’s going out is really content-driven.”

NTHP’s National Preservation Conference 2012 (Spokane) PCMA.ORG

NTHP’S NATIONAL PRESERVATION CONFERENCE 2012 (SPOKANE) preservationnation.org More than 2,000 preservationists and history buffs flooded Spokane, Wash., last fall for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s National Preservation Conference, held Oct. 31–Nov. 3 at the Spokane Convention Center. “During the conference,” said Raina Regan, an architectural historian who attended the conference last year, “using Twitter and the hashtag #presconf was a great way to follow along with tours and education sessions I was unable to attend. This also gave me a clue [to] places I might not have discovered yet and I should check out, including undiscovered areas of the Fox Theater.” Despite the large size of the conference, the social-media strategy was effective in creating a cohesive envi- ronment for attendees. “I also used Twit- ter to connect with attendees I might not have met in random passing at the conference,” Regan said. “I participate in

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