National Association of Broadcasters

Building Communities and Achieving Social Media ROI for the 2011 NAB Show

In 2011, for the third year in a row, Tuvel Communications supported the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) NAB Show through an extensive pre-show and onsite outreach and social media campaign. The NAB Show is an annual conference and expo, held in Las Vegas, NV, that gives 100,000+ attendees and a market of 1,600 companies, thousands of new product introductions and global partnerships the opportunity to connect. It is a living, breathing city, unlike any other in the world, where imagination meets technology and content comes to life. The annual conference provides a wealth of valuable training sessions; exciting exhibits from leading solutions providers; and appearances by top industry idols from film, television, radio and technology.

“This is an exciting online engagement project and a great opportunity for the NAB Show to expand our reach to younger participants and early adopters in the broader-castings industry by using these new media channels. We look forward to seeing new faces at our event as a result of this campaign. As the world’s largest event for leading media, entertainment and communications professionals, we take pride in staying at the cutting edge of media trends on behalf of the content community, and the Tuvel Communications program helps us do just that.”

— Michelle Kelly: National Association of Broadcasters senior vice president, Event Marketing

Goals

As in 2009 and 2010, Tuvel Communications developed an outreach and social media campaign for the 2011 NAB Show that was aimed at increasing engagement with the NAB Show social media community while increasing attendance and awareness amongst new audiences and loyalty with past attendees. The 2011 campaign had specific goals: increasing the total number of those registered; increasing subject matter expert (SME) blog posts, retweets on Twitter and posts/comments/likes on Facebook; increasing overall reach (total engaged); and increasing e-mail outreach response rates.

Strategy

For the 2011 NAB Show, Tuvel's pre-show efforts focused on targeted outreach to different audience segments including online/Internet video and composers/musicians. THis outreach would help us to build meaningful relationships with influencers in these new segments, who would then help to generate word-of-mouth promotion for the NAB Show to their networks.

Outpost activity through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter was also an integral part of pre-show and on-site strategy, allowing us to build thriving communities of attendees and excitement. These communities were used as platforms for successful contests and promotions held both before and during the show.

Tactics

As in past years, Tuvel's 2011 NAB Show outreach messages were once again personalized by audience segment and marketing channel, and included links to segment-specific landing pages with exhibits-only pass codes. The outreach campaign included reaching out to the 100+ supporters who helped spread the word in 2009 and 2010.

Tuvel continued its NAB Show community-building in 2011 by managing outposts on Twitter and Facebook, as well as the NAB Show Blog. We monitored outposts and responded to questions from attendees and exhibitros, as well as kept tabs on NAB Show chatter. The NAB Show Blog was an effective tool for announcements, pre-show promotions and contests, and guest posts from supporters on specific industry topics attendees would be interested in. All told, the social media outposts functioned as a way to further engage influencers and supporters and enlist their help in passing along registration codes and important NAB Show information.

As in the previous two years, Tuvel launched several successful pre-show contests and promotions, including a pre-show Twitter chat (#nabchat) for NAB Show "newbies" and integrated QR code promotions across social media, e-mail, print and the website.

Onsite campaign elements included:

Live-tweeting from various sessions.
Social media giveaways tied in to specific sessions, as well as general giveaways.
Tweetups (known as "NABups") from the show floor.
Special announcements about sessions, promotions and contests via the NAB Show Blog as well as social outposts (particularly Twitter).

For the 2011 NAB Show, Tuvel developed a number of new elements and events that enhanced the success of the effort:

A new Social Media Partner program offered extra incentives to valued supporters for helping spread the word about the 2011 NAB Show.
The creation of an Engagement Index that assigned points for activities at different levels of engagement.
A new and improved Blogger Resources page, providing sample posts, images and banners for bloggers to use for promotion purposes.

Results

Surpassed registration goal by 250% with an ROI of 100+%.
Increased engagement among the social media community through guest subject matter expert (SME) blog posts, retweets on Twitter and activity on Facebook, resulting in a 633% increase in social media activity over 2010.
Increased overall reach (total engaged) by 50% over 2010.
Increased e-mail outreach response and posting rate by 10% and 5.5% over 2010 respectively.

Achieving Similar Success