The first known reference to a red carpet ceremony occurred, according to Wikipedia, in 458 BC in the play Agamemnon by Aeschylus. Since then, it has become synonymous with welcoming VIPs at important events, from royalty to movie stars. Last week, I was fortunate enough to see firsthand how this 2,500 year-old tradition could combine with the latest in 2015’s social media technology for great effect.
Our company, NewzSocial, teamed up with the organizers of the Festival of Globe movie festival to promote its activities using a team of over 30 social media ambassadors. In the days leading up to and during the festival, this small group of ambassadors posted over 7,000 messages, driving over 14,000 clicks and 22,000 shares, likes and retweets – definitely a superb example of effective amplification from a relatively small army of ambassadors.
NewzSocial Analytics Snapshot from the Festival of Globe
The ambassadors had the choice of two modes – manual or automatic. Those in manual mode did a quick review of any suggested posts and comments before they were posted, while those who chose automatic mode gave pre-approval for the FOG team to post selected content about the festival through them.
In addition, another piece of NewzSocial technology, the “social radar”, collected information about the buzz on social media surrounding the Festival of Globe and its key award recipients, and presented this on a live digital display wall during the red carpet awards ceremony.
The NewzSocial Radar for the Festival of Globe
This combination of greatly amplifying outbound communication by posting via advocates, and then collecting, organizing and presenting the inbound buzz around an event, is proving to be quite hot for event planners. In the past few months, NewzSocial has seen a dramatic spike in requests to power their events as organizers see this combination of outbound ambassador amplification and social listening technology as an effective way of meeting their goals of driving greater awareness, attendance and participation.
If your company or organization is planning an event and you would like to see how social media could be used to amplify the messages and objectives of the event, please drop me a line we would love to discuss whether technology from either 458 BC or 2015 might be able to help you enhance your next event.
