Mark FarmerPodCamp Toronto / 2016-02-21

Social in Real LifeHow YorkU won gold by bringing social to live events

Today: Social in Real Life

• How we pulled it off: organizing ourselves.

• The software.

• How it works: live demo!

• The keys to success: how to promote your event, to maximize results.

• Our other experiments.

• The psychology of success.

• The results.

• Lessons learned, “gotchyas” and more.

A Successful Year and its Conclusion • Spring Convocation 2015:

− 13 ceremonies.− 6100 graduates crossed the stage.− 13 honorary degree recipients.− 3 faculty award winners.− 3 student award winners.

Organization

• Brought together a number of units in a highly coordinated fashion.

• Relied on Google docs exclusively for planning & coordination:− Removed the need for a flurry of emails back and forth to

share documents.− No versioning control issues with documents.− Everyone can contribute and modify documents at the same

time.− Full revision history for documents.

Projection

• Was selected as the “big idea” for this convocation by the working group.

• Had achieved great results at Waterloo, as part of their “Convosation” project that won a CASE award.

• Is a key part of the “Friday Night Live” series at the ROM.• Knew it had application to convocation because of the

strong emotional engagement it creates with the audience.

Projection: examples

Convosation: U Waterloo

Friday Night Live at the ROM

The projection software

• Examined over a dozen potential candidates and selected Zoomph. Initially brought forward by ceremonials.

• Zoomph features:− Full moderation / curation.− Can pull from Twitter, Instagram, public Google+ accounts

and up to 10 Facebook pages.− Can pull text, photos or both.− Slideshow functionality.− Reliable, with good customer support.

• Hashtag-based for York (#YorkUConvo) but can be based on search terms or a combo ofhashtags and search terms.

Graditude

•Demoed it at Graditude, a York alumni-student event.−150 pieces of content.−Key takeaway:

▪Mitigate risk through testing & smaller engagements.

▪Visibility: positioning, contrast.

▪Prompt, prompt, prompt.oActually walking up to people and taking their picture.

Content is fully moderated in Zoomph

What appears on screen

Elements of success: accounts

• Created “yorkuconvo” accounts on Twitter and Instagram, to prepopulate content on-screen while waiting for students & parents to post their own content.

• Allowed us to thank individuals who made it on the big screen, for their submissions. This was especially important for those waiting in line outside, who couldn’t see the big screen.

• They would often, in turn, thank us back.

Elements of success: laddering up

• Once we were confident in projection, we went further.• Added signs on day two, once we were able to see that

projection was working as anticipated.

Elements of success: tweeting & prompting

• Live-tweeting from the ceremony.− President’s office live-tweeted each event, producing a huge

amount of content, which drives awareness.

• Prompt, prompt, prompt.−Roving reporters prompted students to take selfies while waiting in the marshalling area.

−Prompted students over the P/A as well.−Created content for the yorkuconvo and yorkupresoffice accounts on Twitter,Instagram and Snapchat.

Elements of success: contest(s)

• Swag bag contest− Roving reporters & York

digital properties promoted one of three YorkU bookstores swag bags, which students could win for the best selfie / convocation pic.

Our other experiments: Snapchat

• President’s office and public affairs activated accounts for convocation.

• Important because 300 million people are on Snapchat, the vast majority being 16-24.− 77% of US college students

use it daily.

Our other experiments: Snapchat

• Created “stories” at the ceremony.− Walkthrough of the venue.− Best wishes.− Etc.

• Added a geofilter.− Allows people on site to take their

own snaps and use an overlay graphic.

New channels: Meerkat / Periscope

• Live streaming through Twitter.

− Meerkat: A nine-minute video gained us 17 followers.

− Periscope: Was too buggy in spring, but proved more reliable by fall.

• Potential for future events, if promoted in advance.

• More about what’s being said / interesting speaker, interesting content.

The Secret Sauce: psychology

• At a certain point, your IT / communications / marketing career stops being about IT, communications or marketing and starts being about psychology.

• Nobody ever became head of IT because they were the best programmer.

• Nobody ever became CMO because they wrote the best copy.

• They got there because they understood people and how to influence them.

How do you motivate people?

• Cialdini−Reciprocity−Scarcity−Authority−Consistency−Liking−Consensus / social proof

How do you motivate people?

• Reciprocity−People tend to return a favor.

• Scarcity−Perceived scarcity will generate demand.

• Authority−People will tend to obey authority figures,

• Consistency−If people commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment.

How do you motivate people?

• Liking−People are easily persuaded by other people that they like.

• Consensus / social proof−People will do things that they see other people are doing.

How we motivated people?

• Cialdini−Reciprocity−Scarcity−Authority−Consistency−Liking−Consensus / social proof

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFdCzN7RYbw

Alterspark.com

For your reference: Dr. Brian Cugelman

Numbers achieved:

• 5,766 pieces of content created by people using #YorkUConvo alone. − This represents almost 12X the convocation content produced by

institutional accounts during the spring 2014 convocation.• Estimated potential reach of over 6.1 million

− This represents almost 90X the reach achieved at the spring 2014 convocation by the units mentioned above.

• Trended on Twitter nationally.• Eclipsed the results for Waterloo’s Convosation

(3,000 tweets) by the midway point of convocation.• Had to shorten the time on screen from

12 to 10, then 9 seconds to accommodate the speed at which content was coming in.

Sentiment

• Overwhelmingly positive

A relationship with “The Big Screen”

• People actually started asking to be on the big screen in their tweets / instagrams, and started taking photos of their content appearing on screen.

• Started seeing “#bigscreen”

A relationship with “The Big Screen”

Why is this important?

• Tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of people saw messages such as these, and then liked / shared them:

Emotional connection

• Back and forth between parents and their kids.• Friends sharing their excitement with friends.• Pride, positivity.

Visual impact

CASE Awards: Gold

Takeaways

• Appealing to the audience’s sense of self, and instant gratification drive engagement: people need to be able to see themselves on-screen in-venue, for projection to achieve results.

−This is common to all live projection events I’ve looked at.

Takeaways

• You can only achieve so much on your own channels. By harnessing the power of the crowd and an emotional connection, you can achieve exponential results.− Amplification: we can reach X number of people, but if we

harness X number of people to produce content they share with their network, we reach X2.

• Prompt, prompt, prompt.• Reduce risk through testing & trials.• Measure, if you want to be taken seriously.

Other potential formats

Questions?

• http://markfarmer.net• Twitter.com/markus64• linkedin.com/in/markfarmer64• Meetup.com/Social-Media-Cafe-Toronto