The back story: Winning the prestigious Webby award for “Breakout of the Year” after realizing a staggering 900-percent growth spurt in 2008, Twitter has become a viral sensation. However, the free service’s description sounds as boring as its actual usage is popular: Users send frequently updated messages — no more than 140 characters long — on the service via computer or phone to one or more individuals. Sounding too limited to be useful, the micro-messaging medium has won over 11 percent of online Americans with its simplicity. Twitter now has somewhere between 6 million to 9 million registered users, based on estimates by Jeremiah Owyang, a social media expert for Cambridge, MA-based Forrester Research Inc.
How it works: Once you sign up for a free account, you can start finding people you hope will follow your tweets by using the service’s tools to contact individuals already on Twitter. You can also search through your Gmail, Yahoo, or AOL e-mail accounts, or just send clients, prospects, or pre-registered show attendees e-mails from your Twitter account, promoting your tweets. If they’re interested in subscribing to your feed, they simply click the “follow” button on your Twitter profile. Then, any time you tweet, your messages are automatically delivered to them via the Twitter program. When someone new starts to follow your feed, Twitter notifies you via e-mail.
How exhibitors are using it: Hewlett-Packard Co.’s ProCurve business added a Twitter-based tactic to its exhibit-marketing program for the 2009 Interop show in Las Vegas last May. HP ProCurve wanted to capture 400 leads, almost 13 percent more than it did at the 2008 show. But with show attendance down almost 20 percent from 2008, HP ProCurve knew it needed to aggressively market itself using all available means.
After setting up a Twitter account and recruiting 150 initial followers by reaching out on its Web site. HP ProCurve reps sent out a tweet once every two days at first, then once or twice a day in the four days before Interop opened its doors. The tweets alerted the recipients about new HP ProCurve technologies showcased in the exhibit, the 10 partner companies featured in the booth, and prizes it would give away.
The day Interop started, HP ProCurve ratcheted up the number of its tweets, building to five or six a day for the three days the show ran. The company also gave away two prizes a day, such as an iPod or digital picture frame, prefaced by tweets urging followers to come to the booth for the reward. HP ProCurve’s prizes came with a twist: You had to be the first to locate one of the eight product areas in its booth called “pods,” find a specific staff person, then offer that staffer a special password. One such tweet read, “Stop by the convergence pod in the HP booth today, see Renee, and mention ‘Networks Collide’ to win.”
The 150 initial followers mushroomed into 250 by the time the show closed. Aiming for 400 leads, the company surpassed its goal by 50 percent, reaching 600, thanks at least in part to its promotion.
While HP ProCurve found out Twitter can propel prospects to visit your booth at a show, Rick Grant found it could also bring the show to your prospects. When Grant, the owner of consulting firm Rick Grant and Associates Inc., worried that attendance at the 2009 Technology in Mortgage Banking Conference & Expo would be low, he sought a way to engage with the few prospects that might be at the show, and connect to those that couldn’t make the trip.
Before the expo opened, Grant set up a Twitter account, then contacted approximately 75 current and prospective clients in 50 companies that were not registered to attend the show, requesting that they sign up for the micro-blogging medium to follow him during the expo.
During the show, Grant updated his Twitter followers several times a day, tweeting about conference sessions, the facility and amenities, gossip overheard in the hallways, and new offerings on the show floor. The dynamic duo of Twitter’s immediacy and intimacy resulted in a unique post-show relationship: In the months since the expo, Grant discovered that he is twice as likely to generate new business from a company where at least one executive followed him on Twitter than those that didn’t.
The takeaway: Use Twitter to offer incentives to come to your booth, tweeting the offer starting roughly one week before the show and then several times throughout the day during it. Engage those not attending the show by tweeting bulletins of which exhibitors are there, updates on new products, and summaries of educational presentations.
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