How do you inspire users to produce content for you?

Tech organizations are among the most prodigious producers of big conferences for consumers to attend. There’s Dreamforce from Salesforce, Oracle OpenWorld, Adobe Summit—and then there’s Cisco Live, a five-day event at which Cisco showcases its solutions. One secret to its success? Twitter, which has earned Cisco first place in the “Use of Twitter” category of PR Daily’s 2017 Digital PR & Social Media Awards.

With so many events, how can you get attendees to pay attention to your event and deliver content about it? Part of Cisco’s answer was to let attendees know their tweets, completing the phrase, “Your time is now to _____,” could wind up skywritten, with the first 10 appearing on the Las Vegas skyline on their way to the opening keynote. 

But although the skywriting gimmick caught attention, it was just one element of a well-conceived Twitter strategy. At the site, Cisco constructed a highly visible social media command center within the conference’s social media hub across from registration; there, Cisco tracked real-time engagement opportunities and identified possible sales leads. 

The hub became a focal point for networking at the conference, which led to more connections. A scavenger hunt rounded out the campaign as a way to engage people experiencing the conference remotely, as they were able to watch attendees share photos of the items listed in the hunt. They were also able to compete remotely for an Amazon gift card. 

The campaign targeted multiple audiences, from onsite attendees to the technology press, and hit all the right notes. The five-day event racked up more than 732 million social media impressions and nearly 91,000 comments across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. More importantly, Cisco communicators say that Twitter allowed them to “access immediate insight into the pulse of the attendee experience, enabling us to respond quickly to individual issues and those with the potential to affect participant satisfaction scores. Twitter also offers a direct communication channel with attendees and creates a stronger and more intimate engagement with the brand.” 

Kudos and congratulations to Cisco for its use of Twitter.