Whether it’s a high profile gathering or a small scale event, Social Media is a powerful tool which will help you get the word out in a very effective manner. We were the proud Social Media partners for the Indian Federation of Culinary Associations’ 6th International Chefs Conference which was held on the 20th, 21st and 22nd of March at ITC Grand Chola in Chennai. The conference had delegates from all over the world which included top chefs, restaurateurs, food stylists, marketers, nutritionists, academicians and technocrats from hospitality, tourism and media! We made sure to spread the word as widely as possible as we had our social media strategies planned for before, during and after the event. Here’s how we went about!
Multi-channel shoutout: Pre-event & Post-event
To have an effective outreach online promotion for an event requires activation of as many social media channels as possible. We began by setting up the channels and building the community with the use of Facebook advertisements; we ran like campaign ads, event ads and boost post to bring audience to the Facebook page and to help reach the posts to the audience. Custom audience were targeted and an already in place database of audience did the trick! Active content sharing began pre event beginning with the press release shares, creative posts portraying the upcoming event that were boosted with an allocated budget set to reach the post the audience. Likewise, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest channels were also created to share the posts on the channels and to engage the audience.
Contest for Food bloggers
Keeping in mind the international culinary event, we reached out to the food bloggers across the country to give them an opportunity to become a part of the grandest culinary event. We ran a food blogging contest where we asked the bloggers to answer only 2 questions to win a free entry to IFCA:
What is your favorite dish and why?
&
Why do you think you should win a free entry to the IFCA’s 6th ICC’s?
The contestants were asked to promote the contest and the event on their own blogs by publishing the answers to the questions in a blog post, thus submitting their entries and spreading word about the event.
Two winners were announced before the event: Amit Patnaik and Sankara Narayanan who also covered the event by live tweeting and by blogging, thus lending the social media touch! This helped us accumulate a niche section of our target audience to increase engage better for the event.
Sharing offline presence online
We also showed our audience how active we were on the offline promotional sphere. echoVME shared all press released on newspapers with the link to the online article showing strength in reach and engagement.
Inviting & Striking conversations with chefs on Twitter
echoVME’s one-to-many approach on Facebook was assisted with a one-to-one approach on Twitter. We tweeted to individual chefs to spread awareness about IFCA’s ICC 2015, by engaging them and inviting them personally on a daily basis. Over the course, we personally invited over 700 chefs! The hashtag created for the same was #IFCA2015.
Live tweeting at the event
From 8am, echoVME’s social media team was active at the venue, tweeting from trivial details to the main program. Live tweeting during every address on stage was done along with pictures of the venue, the hosts, etc.
Apart from live tweeting, the stage was thrown open to the participants to tweet with the hashtag #IFCA2015 to increase visibility for the event, thus making the entire room buzzing with the tweets! A screen was exclusively set up to showcase the tweets.
Post event coverage
Likewise, after the event, the post event coverage began by thanking the audience for making the event a grand success. Photographs, videos and press coverage articles were also updated.
Every tweet that carried the hashtag #IFCA was replied to, Re-Tweeted and shared and the queries answered as well.
Thus, IFCA’s 6th ICC was given the full social media coverage for pre as well as post event yielding maximum visibility and coverage.
This blog post was written by our Business Development Exec Rathnakar and Social Media Executive Payal.
