How BIO Used New Social Sharing Technology to Drive High Engagement Leading Up to the 2023 BIO International Convention
Using organic social sharing techniques and tools, BIO’s social media team was able to drive record levels of engagement for their premier event.
For social media managers, successfully reaching an organization’s member companies, partners, and journalists with news and information about upcoming events is critically important.
The question is how to do it effectively without all the usual obstacles of high costs associated with online advertising and the time and effort it takes assembling content for partners to share – all to generate better attendance, event engagement, and sharing of important news and information.
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), the world's largest trade association representing biotech companies, academic institutions, and other related organizations coordinates about a dozen events and conferences throughout the year with partner organizations.
The biggest of these is the world’s largest gathering of the biotechnology industry, the BIO International Convention, with this year's event taking place in Boston, MA boasting over 20,000 in-person attendees over four days. Attendees from across sectors, from academia to healthcare, took advantage of an exhibit floor with over 1,200 exhibiting companies, with representation from over 40 countries and 25 states. With the support of the BIO One-on-One Partnering™ System, the organization facilitated over 57,000 meetings for various companies within the biotech industry.
Using Organic Social Tools
To facilitate engagement for this year’s convention, BIO’s marketing team used an innovative social media technology from SpeechifAI that made it easier for partners and others to organically share out information -- to boost attendance and amplify their community-building and engagement. At the same time, the tools helped streamline processes that were otherwise time-consuming and expensive.
“We would put together basic marketing packages and have them on the website with a download link to a deck with images and text,” says Will Cyphers, Senior Director of Marketing at BIO. “Not only was it hard to put together a full asset package quickly, but it put the onus on partner companies to download and share them.”
As a product developed to meet marketers’ needs, SpeechifAI’s organic social toolkits not only provided BIO’s social media team with a centralized space to craft and share event messaging for a variety of different social media platforms and audiences but also provided insightful analytics reports that helped the team identify their most effective promotional messaging.
“There is a real opportunity with social media to build momentum around big topic issues in healthcare, technology, intellectual property, and more. We look to use social media to bring to light what is happening in that policy landscape and bring together partners in that space,” says Cyphers.
Boosting Engagement
Experts agree that when it comes to marketing online, user-generated content from family, friends, and online connections edges out online advertisements and posts from branded pages.
To boost the number of potential attendees at their events, BIO’s social media team utilized organic social sharing tools that give event attendees the ability to customize and share event messaging with their online audiences.
Using SpeechifAI’s toolkits, for instance, BIO placed pre-written, customizable Twitter and LinkedIn posts directly on the event webpage, ready for attendees, speakers, and partners to share. With their online social media toolkit, BIO enabled partners and attendees alike to quickly share messaging about the 2023 BIO International Convention with their social networks without downloading third-party documents or granting social media permissions to third-party apps.
Image Subtitle: Here BIO posted SpeechifAI widgets directly on its BIO International Convention event webpage, providing easy ways for partners and speakers to share their contributions.
“Having a visible and accessible social presence is key when spreading the word about new events or collaborations through our social media channels, our news hub Bio.News, and our daily newsletter. Leaning into the right toolset enables us to put out resources quickly and expand our reach immensely,” notes Cyphers.
The results speak for themselves. For their promotions surrounding the June 2023 International Convention, BIO’s organic social share toolkits were used by attendees to share nearly 6,000 organic posts on social media about the event.
Providing Value
The cost of advertising on social media has consistently increased over the past few years, with ad spending expected to rise to over $268 billion in 2023. These increasing costs can make paying for more exposure for their events an impossibility for many businesses and organizations.
Utilizing the strength of its partner organizations and the biotech community, BIO has been able to capitalize on organic social share to execute a cost-efficient event promotion strategy at a fraction of the cost of digital advertising.
Taking LinkedIn alone, where adverts are estimated to cost an average of $5.26 per click, SpeechifAI estimates that BIO’s organic sharing campaigns over the last 15 months have generated nearly $60,000 in marketing value through social share toolkits. This includes 8,500 organic clicks on BIO content and 2.3 million estimated social media impressions
As BIO wraps up another successful International Convention, they are looking to continue utilizing organic social sharing techniques and word-of-mouth marketing to keep their partners and attendees engaged, even after the event ends.
Cyphers gives this advice to other marketers looking to boost their event engagement, “Using the right tools makes your marketing team more efficient, freeing you up to focus on the bigger picture things and think more cohesively about what your organization can do as a whole. Toolkits like SpeechifAI’s abandon the “one thing at a time” mentality, allowing you to think through a solid comms plan and expedite and grow to bigger audiences.”