How ICCA managed to make its congress a star on twitter

First the objectives. The objectives of the social media strategy were:

-Increasing the value of the Congress for members .

-Increasing interaction and connectivity between members, before, during and after the event.

-Showing members that are not going what they are missing.

-Online ICCA profiling to our other target groups: potential members, associations, press.

Result: 7,180 Tweets with #ICCAWorld were sent in the 3 weeks before, during and the 1.5 weeks after the Congress. The #ICCAWorld hashtag reached almost 2,5 million unique users and had almost 15 million impacts.

The congress also helped broadened the group of professionals involved with ICCA on the social network: One day after the 887-delegate congress, there were 963 unique #ICCAWorld contributors. One and a half weeks after the congress, this number climbed to 1,500.

Hashtags with a purpose

ICCA created and communicated “hashtags with a purpose”. Communication strategist for ICCA Mathijs Vleeming said “Just communicating your event hashtag is not enough. We spelled out what we wanted delegates to do with the hashtags and how to make the most of the online conversation.”

So ICCA asked delegates to share the key takeaways of the sessions with the ICCA community, using #ICCAWorld. Mathijs Vleeming adds: “Why take notes on a piece of paper if you can share them and allow the world to see?” The Storify with key takeaways from #ICCAWorld congress participants can be seen here.

No specific event hashtag: ICCA used its community hashtag #ICCAWorld as the event hashtag, to encourage their members to take the value of the offline ICCA member network to social media and use it throughout the year. An interesting choice, of continuous conversation rather than creating a specific congress conversation.

Pre-event

It is critical to create awareness and interest before the event. In order for followers and friends to see that they are going to the ICCA Congress and what they are missing out on, ICCA asked delegates to share images, tips and advice on their journey to- and preparations for the congress. There were 753 tweets which include #RoadtoAntalya.

Consultant Gerrit Heijkoop, who was supporting the social media strategy, said: “We know event delegates are preparing for an event in the weeks before it takes place. They are reading the programme, packing, waiting in airports; that is the moment you are getting into the mood for the event, and we were leveraging that with the hashtag #RoadtoAntalya.”

A few more figures:

– Of the total number of 7,377 tweets, almost 33% were original tweets (2/3 of which included links and/or images), over 62% were retweets, 4.8% replies, accounting for a reach (= number of unique users that could have seen Tweets with the #ICCAWorld hashtag) of almost 2,5 million and almost 15 million impacts (= the potential number of times somebody could have seen Tweets with the #ICCAWorld hashtag). 

– Regarding intensity of activity before, during and after the event, numbers point to 1.545 tweets before the event, 4.024 during and 1.611 after.

Twitter adds value to the meeting

According to the post-Congress survey 59% of the delegates were active on Twitter before, during or after the Congress. 70% of those delegates using Twitter said it helped them to increase the value of their experience, and almost 75% said they feel using Twitter helped them to increase their interaction with other members.

And a last piece of wisdom: “Just having great Twitter statistics is not the goal of our social media efforts. The aim of using Twitter for most participants is to bookmark and share great content (of education sessions), to inspire thinking by colleagues in the meetings industry, and to meet new people. It is not about social media, it is about connectivity”.

Now… your turn!