The Challenge

One of the key challenges for any brand’s social media strategy is to create a sense of community and loyalty among its fans. Sometimes, that community already exists and the job of the social media leaders is to start engaging those people in new channels of communication. Comic Con Salt Lake City is an enormously successful convention that recently launched last year bringing in thousands and thousands of people to its events.

While researching what they did that gave them so much success I came across an article from adnewsonline.com that explains their strategy. In order to accomplish this success they first created a specific list of goals. This list included:

In order to achieve a successful first time event, they created a list of specific targets:

• Gathering 50,000+ Facebook fans in the target demographic.

• Gathering 1,000+ Twitter followers including leading influencers to the target demographic.

• Create Viral Content that would generate significant Social Media Reach.

• Sell 35,000 Tickets.

• Sellout Booth Space, Artist Alley and Sponsorships to relevant high quality/content oriented companies.

• Meet celebrity guest guaranteed minimums.

Ubiquitous coverage of Intermountain region via Facebook.

• Create an event that would generate significant and positive post-event buzz, ensuring the long-term success of the brand.

These were clear and specific goals for the company. However, not only did they develop clear goals but they also planned out how they were going to accomplish them. Using a variety of methods, skills and tactics, they sought to create a general awareness around the Salt Lake Comic Con brand using multiple approaches:

• Create an interactive Facebook Fan Page in order to drive engagement and sales, using strong call to action memes, encouraging likes and shares.

• Focus on the prime demographic and create content that fans want to share (turning fans into evangelists for viral and word-of-mouth marketing).

• Engage and entertain rather than sell, especially on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.

• Leverage the power of association, relating Salt Lake Comic Con to the brands represented by celebrities that starred in the blockbuster movies and televisions shows such as Star Wars, Star Trek and others.

• Make decisions that benefit everyone involved, from customers to fans, employees to partners, vendors and sponsors.

• Create a market niche offering the only product or solution to the target market.

Continually identify and qualify the desired prospect.

• Show celebrity agents a professional web presence, with social media engagement higher than virtually all other Comic Con fan pages, and above average ticket pre-sales.

• Heavily market autograph sessions and photo ops to ensure a strong demand in order to meet celebrity guarantees.

Salt Lake Comic Con sought to strategically build, connect, engage and influence their unique target market surrounding Salt Lake City. They were able to achieve this through much research. This then gave them a better understanding of the wants, needs, and desires of their target market. In the end, they were right on strategy and created a huge buzz across multiple social media platforms.

http://adnewsonline.com/case-study-comic-con-salt-lake/