Social Media Management Dubai: ASHRM 2014

Howler Monkey PR

Social Media Management Dubai at ASHRM 2014We were tasked with managing social media channels as part of our work on the ASHRM 2014 conference. Social media management in Dubai UAE is part of our freelance portfolio of skills, and for this assignment we were asked to focus heavily on Twitter, and to use this to promote the conference to delegates. The aims were twofold – to drive delegate engagement in the conference and to increase online ticket sales through digital channels.

Social Media Management Dubai at ASHRM 2014

When looking at any marketing brief, we always carry out some background research. Social media management is a big issue for many businesses, and Dubai and the UAE are no exception. We like to ensure we get a full picture of the audience and what the key factors are that motivate them to attend conferences and events. As ASHRM is the only dedicated HR organisation for the Arabic world, there were additional geographic, social and cultural issues to consider as part of their social media management brief. Our research showed that, much like in Western Europe, Twitter is an immensely popular social media channel and its use is skyrocketing. It’s viewed as being infinitely cooler than Facebook, especially among the younger Middle Eastern audience.

However, the ASHRM membership and core target audience is made up of HR managers and executives of a wide age range. We met talented HR staff aged anywhere from 21 to 70+. Even though the vast majority of attendees all have the latest smartphones, it is apparent that Twitter use was much popular and frequent among the under 40’s. It’s fair to say that social media management in Dubai was challenging as we had to encourage the older generation of ASHRM conference attendees to use Twitter, and we believe we made a strong impact in this area.

During the conference itself, several attendees lost their inhibitions, sending tweets for the very first time. In fact, Twitter engagement during the conference, boosted by the #ASHRM2014 hashtag that we heavily promoted the use of, went through the roof, with delegate tweets, photos, retweets, interaction and engagement being the highest the organisation’s channel has ever experienced to date. Our tweets prior to the conference also scored retweets from speakers with a huge following, such as co-founder of Twitter Dom Sagolla, thereby increasing the marketing visibility and reach of the conference dramatically.

Twitter activity post-conference also remained very high, with delegates tweeting for up to several weeks after the event, indicating that our period of social media management in Dubai was a great success. Delegates fedback that they were really impressed with the activity and tweets on the ASHRM Twitter channel before and during the conference, and they would love this to be kept up. We didn’t even need to take photos to tweet, as attendees became so ready to take their own snapshots and share them on Instagram and Twitter with the #ASHRM2014 hashtag.

As you can see, we have embedded a very small fraction of the tweets sent by delegates during the ASHRM 2014 conference in Dubai. To see all the engagement we engineered as part of our social media management brief at the ASHRM conference in February 2014, do visit the ASHRM Twitter account. Feel free to get in touch if you have a social media management brief you would like us to manage.

Howler Monkey

Howler Monkey

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