Co-Written by J.Camp and C.Brown
We gathered. We shared knowledge. All in all, the Industry Collective was strong at Murmuration 2012, and we couldn’t have done it without all of the participation from our panelists and the Nashville community. The event generated more measurable Social Media buzz than any marketing event in our history, and was wildly successful in leading to cash donations to the NTC Scholarship Fund and to Nashville’s chapter of the Intern’l Social Media Club.
We brought together the top leaders of the social media and technology world to speak at the historic Franklin Theatre. Attendees flocked to hear panelists Jeff Cohen (Radian6, @jeffreylcohen), Dawn Devirgilio (ExactTarget, @dawndevirgilio), Patrick Salyer (Gigya, @patricksalyer), Marcus Whitney (Moontoast, @marcuswhitney), special unannounced speaker Robert Brown (Nissan, @jrobertb),and James Soto (ISM, @jamessotoism) share insights, technologies, and strategies on the rapidly developing landscape in social marketing.
The panels covered a wide spectrum of hot topics – from the challenges and risks that today’s business leaders face to the opportunities as social media becomes integral to campaign and relationship-based marketing.
Now, it’s time to dig a bit deeper and recap … i.e. the “Murmuration Effect”, and how we went about accomplishing our goals.
Murmuration was geared toward supporting enterprise teams and marketing executives who wanted to explore the most effective, creative and 
advanced ways that social media could make a measurable difference for their business, their clients, or their employers.
When we set out, it was our goal to reach the following members of the community at large. This was accomplished by creating a “map” of everywhere on and offline that these targets spend time. A few of the groups include:
Speakers we pursued: Gigya, MoonToast, ExactTarget, Facebook, Linkedin
Result: Received immediate confirmation from Gigya, ExactTarget, and MoonToast. Facebook made a soft commitment (now we see that the IPO announcement was keeping them a bit busy). Linkedin expressed interest too close to the date of the event to participate.
Marketing Associations and Groups: PRSA, NAMA, IABC, Nashville Technology Council, The 615, SMC Nashville, AAF
Result: Every association on-board as advocates or sponsors, and all were in attendance
Local Corporations: Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Catepillar, Genesco, Griffin, Eventful, Magazines.com, Emma Email Marketing, Raven Tools, Gaylord, Vanderbilt, Nissan Americas, Infiniti, Kirklands, SESAC, Xerox, CMT and approx. 100 other local companies
Result: 100% Awareness, 80% of the targeted companies were in attendance (100% of those listed above), 2 became sponsors, and Nissan joined us on stage.
Local Marketing and PR firms: As Industry Collective is all about the community, we also sought attendance from local PR and Marketing agencies as we have long felt they are groups that stand to gain the most from a solid enterprise social media education.
Result: Estimated 100% Awareness, 73% of the targeted companies were in attendance. The companies included Gamma Blast, [meta]marketer, Birdsong Creative, Powell Creative, Sheridan PR, Fletcher Rowley, Journal Communications, Deane Smith & Partners, Caddis, LexisNexis, Red Pepper, Athens-South, ACS, iostudio, Marshall and Bruce, Phase 3, Nashville Business Journal, DVL, Meredith Group, and dozens more.
Overwhelmingly, our main advocates on Twitter were the drivers of over 84% of all online communications. 90% were between the ages of 25-44 (equally split between 25-34 and 35-44) and 62% of those that mentioned us online were women.
Like all good things, we started with a plan. A brief “Playbook” was written and distributed to speakers, sponsors, and association partners and we simply encouraged their participation. This was made manageable as we provided everything from a well-written editorial calendar, to pre-crafted press releases and emails for easy distribution. Even the emails were created from the start with branding for those that were to distribute.
We based our communications strategy on key milestones that were mapped out in the Marketstrong platform, and triggered social updates and reminders to everyone ahead of each communication milestone. In order to track the event, we included the hashtag #murmuration in all communications. (For better tracking we tagged “negative keywords” like “starlings” and “birds+flock” – the hashtag previously had 1 to 2 daily mentions)
Throughout this campaign, we also tagged influencers online and tracked their activity. This activity tracked in the context of a campaign allows us to identify influencers in a much different way than a site like Klout. Rather than simply looking at a general class of retweets and reach, it allows us to measure entity relationships and as people engage with our campaigns, allows us to track activity across the web as it relates to future campaigns – thus allowing intelligent identification of new potential advocates. Using this methodology, we were able to minimize our efforts and still see great success.
Note: Our tracking was meant to cover a range of items, including speakers, companies, associations, and sponsors. In an effort to truly track the effect of the event on our partners, we included generic keywords as well as company and speaker twitter handles.
If you attended Murmuration, thank you for your enthusiastic participation & we look forward to hearing your thoughts!
Search and Social Strategist for Industrial Strength Marketing.
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