As Shelly Milam mentioned in an earlier post, the annual SAP conference, SAPPHIRE NOW, was a great social media success. In addition to her points, I wanted to touch on two other strategies that Page One and SAP developed to encourage quality levels of social media activity.
1. Use of official hashtags
The conference underwent a name change, from Sapphire 09 to SAPPHIRE NOW. To make sure social media users were clear about the re-brand, Page One made sure to use the #sapphirenow hashtag in the majority of our tweets from the @SAPPHIRENOW Twitter feed. This helped to ensure that the new name would gain visibility before the conference started. We didn’t want to risk having the Twitterverse split up mentions of the SAPPHIRE NOW conference by using more than one hashtag when they tweeted about the event.
Hashtags allow tweets to be grouped together so that they can be easily located via Twitter search. For a large conference event like SAPPHIRE NOW, the hashtags were particularly useful for three groups of people. Many conference attendees in Orlando and Frankfurt were active live-tweeters who used the #sapphire to tag their updates, especially during the keynote speeches, which were timed to be presented to both locations simultaneously. SAP also launched an innovative website that allowed people to attend the conference virtually, and many online attendees were live-tweeting while streaming the keynotes. Finally, for people who could not attend the conference physically or virtually, the #sapphirenow stream was publishing such a high volume of tweets that it provided them a play-by-play of the conference’s most important events.
The #sapphirenow hashtag collected over 12,131 mentions by the end of the conference on May 19. On May 18, during the executive keynote speeches by Jim Hagemann Snabe and Bill McDermott, the hashtag was the number 4 Twitter trending topic in the U.S. This uniform use of the correct hashtag would not have happened without establishing #sapphirenow as the official hashtag weeks before the conference.
2. Designating multiple routing paths for the Twitter concierge
In addition to being the official voice of the conference, one of the functions of the @SAPPHIRENOW Twitter feed was to act as a concierge for attendees who needed assistance with anything from finding the nearest bathroom, getting more information on a certain session, or navigating through the virtual website. Many attendees asked questions via @reply or DM, and Page One and SAP worked together to designate the proper routing path for each type of question and for each location (Frankfurt, Orlando, or online). Each routing path led to the appropriate SAP employee either on-location or back at SAP headquarters. This made sure that every question asked would be answered as soon as possible via Twitter.
A Twitter feed cannot just spew out information. It needs to listen. Social media platforms are expected to meet a higher standard when it comes to customer service. Corporate accounts are expected to have a personal voice behind the brand that engages with its followers and fans. Social media users like to know that their opinions are being heard, and when the @SAPPHIRENOW feed responded to followers who had conference-related questions, they were appreciative of our help. This helps spread positive content about the Twitter feed, and it lets our followers know that they are important to us.
The development of both these strategies helped to make @SAPPHIRENOW a successful Twitter feed leading up to and during the conference. An overwhelming majority of the Twitter conversations about the conference were extremely positive and attendees were very impressed with SAPPHIRE NOW’s social media initiatives. Key takeaway: in social media, a little pre-planning can lead to a high payoff.
Tags: community, conference, conversation, event promotion, hashtag, sap, social media, Twitter
Gotta love this title: "Android Is As Open As The Clenched Fist I’d Like To Punch The Carriers With" -
Susan, as always appreciate your insights. To clarify “designating multiple routing paths,” do you mean that certain questions were routed to SAP employees and all subsequent answers went up on @SAPPHIRENOW or did you have multiple Twitter feeds responding to questions directly? Both are interesting strategies.
Nice job on the campaign. I’m “hungry like the wolf” for more.
David – During the conference, questions were routed to the appropriate SAP employee via email, and once they emailed back a response, I posted the answer via the @SAPPHIRENOW feed.
Thanks! I hope you never stop commenting.
I see. Thanks Susan. I really enjoy your posts so plan to comment on every one.
Hi Susan,
How did you route questions to the appropriate SAP employee email from twitter? Do you think it is just as effective to have questions via the DM on twitter? I appreciate any of your input/thoughts.
Kim, ARC Advisory Group
Kim –
When I received a question via @reply on Twitter, I then took the question and emailed it to the appropriate SAP employee. I worked out with SAP weeks before the conference started the proper routing path for each type of question.
I also paid attention to our DM inbox. Whenever questions came in via DM, I would also take these and email it to an SAP employee.
Let me know if I can offer any more clarifications!
- Susan