Hello Everyone!

Just a quick after action status report. I’m not sure if people find these useful, but there is so little in the way of actual numbers out there. So I’m trying to provide a little bit more detailed information.

Event: 2012 Women’s Expo, Manchester, NH
The event we were attending was in February. It had a turn out of roughly 500 people an hour, and ran for six hours. I use hourly attendance, because people would come for only a short period of time and then leave. This resulted in a wave like attendance at the booth. We were right by the front door.

Set up: Facebook Event, Foursquare Check In, Booth with Raffle
We set up a Facebook event, sent out status updates before the event, and also set up a Foursquare check in. At the event itself, we had our booth, staff, and were running a raffle for a Pampered Chef cookware set. Our staff were all trained for member contact and to engage at the event, and have done events in the past.

Results

• 317 people engaged with us for the raffle, and of that roughly 20% sought out more information on our Credit Union. We engaged with them through the staff we had working the event.
• These numbers were consistent with previous years based on number of people attending.
  
• Foursquare was a bust. The event was in a large concrete and steel structure, and cell phones had extremely limited connectivity. As a result, people saw our sign but couldn’t get their phones to connect to the event listing.
• We had an excellent mix of new contacts vs. existing members. Existing members mentioned the Facebook page as a reason for stopping by to say “Hello!”

Closing Thoughts
Customer, or member engagement in our case, should be happening at events that your customers/members care about. By being at these events you build rapport with your customers and encourage them to engage with you. Social media can have a role in this.

Foursquare might become limited to outside events depending on your location. If you are planning to use Foursquare, you should evaluate the site before hand during your set up time for connectivity and signal issues.

Jason

@amyhallbiz Thank you. I think if more of us provide these reports it will help us improve our reporting back to senior management and let us A) prove the value of social media, and B) give us all a frame of reference to judge our own successes by.

To often when I’m reading the latest “MUST HAVE OMG BOOK OF SOCIAL MEDIA REVELATIONS,” or, you know, whatever their working title happens to be, and there is a lot of “1) Set up Facebook page… 2) do stuff… X) Profit.” and not enough “Although results may vary, average engagement ratios will be between 0.2 and 0.4, with ratios of 0.5 or higher indicating incredible engagement. If you are under 0.1, you need to evaluate your efforts.”

We have ratios for financial analysis and project management (MIRR, NPV, etc etc) but not for Social Media! So hopefully, if we can start a movement* then we can start being more then just a useful sounding board, but a valuable research source as well.

Even if it’s just me, I hope I can keep providing useful insights as I get them, and hopefully others will find that useful and use it to improve themselves

* = And yes, we can end our posts with “You can get anything you want, at Alice’s restaurant …”

@denisedorman Hello Denise!

Thank you for your well thought out reply! You are right: the irony is that the technology does rely on wireless access, and it isn’t always there, or people might not have the ability to stand around for a few minutes at a crowded convention or when you’re right at the door. New prime territory for conventions might be over by the windows!

GPS tracking is another big issue as well, and one that is certainly a concern for a lot of folk. When you’re in an industry like mine, such concerns have to be taken very seriously.

I watched the interview, and I’m interested to read the book as well. Once I get approval to buy it, it is going to the top of my read list. I’ll look forward to your review, and I do hope it is full of metrics and not lists of things to do followed by the final bullet point: * Profit.

Jason