There’s no reason to deny it — the world is turning increasingly digital, and this year, many things have happened for the first time. Especially in the event industry, as countless events were held online. Venues turned virtual, discussions switched to online chats, and speakers are now presenting from the comfort of their living rooms.
This digital transformation involves certain challenges. With events turning virtual and, therefore, more global, it is harder to keep attendees engaged and informed at all times.
Fortunately, the social media game is now stronger than ever. Innovative companies adapt to the new reality and learn how to use digital tools to their benefit.
Seismic, a global sales enablement solution, is one of these companies. This year, they made their biggest sales enablement event, Seismic Digital Shift, entirely virtual for the first time and embedded a social wall to the event microsite to showcase all the social media content around it.
Harness the power of social media with a social wall
Seismic turned to Cornerstone Production, a leading full-service event provider and a Walls.io partner, to organise the event to the highest standard. Digital Shift included two days of virtual-stage interviews, panels, and breakout sessions from industry professionals at Salesforce, Intel and IBM. All the sessions were hosted on a virtual platform so that attendees could curate their Digital Shift journey, chat with each other, download resources, and win prizes.
We talked with Jesse Jay, Field Marketing Manager at Seismic, to learn how a social wall helped Seismic achieve its goals.
Could you tell us more about the Seismic Digital Shift event?
Seismic Digital Shift was our biggest virtual event. For the first time, we welcomed industry professionals along with our loyal customer base to an engaging two-day conference. We targeted sales, marketing, and enablement leaders from viewing 60 plus Seismic sessions. We had over 1,600 attendees viewing over 11,600 sessions in total.
Could you give us more details about the technical setup?
We reached out to Cornerstone Production to help us produce and create a platform to host all 60 of our sessions. They assisted us from the beginning stages of the event with creating our theme and branding to producing save-the-date videos and teasers to get people registered. As a result, we attribute a lot of our registration numbers to the branding and graphics.
We promoted Digital Shift primarily through paid social ads and employee activations, in which social media played a key role.
We also shared content that highlighted the event theme, keynotes, and speakers on our corporate channels, provided employees with 1:1 message templates so they could follow up with individual prospects, and sent our speakers, partners, and customers personalised graphics to share with their networks.
Cornerstone recommended Walls.io and did the heavy lifting to integrate it into their homegrown website. They knew what we wanted to accomplish by having a social media wall. The key benefit of a social wall is that it is virtual.
How did you promote the official hashtag?
We mentioned the event hashtag in every event-related social copy and the graphics we shared through our corporate channels. As a result, everyone who received a message about Shift, both internally and externally, was aware of it.
The key benefit of embedding a social wall on our website is that it enabled prospects to see a wide variety of our assets — from hype videos to speaker graphics and everything in between — quickly and all at once.
It was also a visual way to say, “Hey, there’s a lot of folks excited about this event, and here’s what they’re looking forward to.” So from that perspective, I think it helped engage our audience and positively influenced those interested in learning more about the event.
A campfire for your event
A social wall for your event combines all of your social efforts and keeps your audience updated. The buzz around the event becomes more tangible and visual. And what can be more important when the event is going global?
With the event hashtag, you can also inspire attendees to share their content around your event, participate in the conversations, and create a sense of community, no matter how far apart they are physically.
You can embed a social wall everywhere — not only on websites but also into virtual event venues, apps, or any physical screen. And thanks to our integrations with our virtual event partners, adding a social wall to your virtual event is super easy.
Want to learn more about social media for virtual and hybrid events? We got you.