How to run great social for events: Metia supports Microsoft Health at HIMSS 2016

The Metia healthcare team recently returned from another year at HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition. HIMSS is the health industry's largest health IT educational program and tradeshow. This year HIMSS took place in Las Vegas from February 29 - March 4, 2016 at the Venetian Sands conference center.

With 45,000 delegates, attendees included health IT professionals, clinicians, executives and vendors, HIMSS is the standout opportunity to engage healthcare professionals during the year. Getting both strategy and execution right is critical. 

During this year's HIMSS, the Metia healthcare team provided support for our client Microsoft in Health.

Through a variety of marketing channels including social media management, video booth coordination, moderation and promotion with onsite and offsite staff, event pages and blog posts, Metia helped support Microsoft's many partners and delivered their brand message of 'Delivering Care through Trust and Compliance'.

Here's a great recap of a day from Indigo Slate at the Microsoft in Health booth. 

Some of the social support included three "Twitter Takeovers". Microsoft and Intel execs took over the Microsoft in Health's Twitter channel and visited other partners booths on the show floor.

Our creative team came up with the idea of asking Neil Jordan (GM, Health industry) wear a bow-tie during the takeover; Erwin Visser (GM, EPG) display his soccer skills (he had a great time playing with other participants); and Sarah Muckler (Dir., WW Health Marketing) and Joan Hankin (Global Director Marketing & Business Development, Intel Corp.) made their way around the floor checking out the attending partner booths and meeting delegates.

The key to success for delivering great social media coverage at a large event is to have both an onsite and an offsite staff. At a large and very active event it is crucial to be able to cover both what is happening spontaneously on the ground in the various events using a mobile device - with possibly shaky wifi - and have the support of a team offsite with access to more stable technology and working to a planned progam of activities.

A multi-channel marketing approach is necessary to get the word out and promote brand awareness through social media, blogs, websites, emails and more. All should be coordinated to make sure all messaging and content stays on point. In our experience, it can take weeks, if not months, of planning and collaborating to ensure a major industry event is successful. 

Metia team members Suna and Patrick at the Microsoft in Health booth

Check out some of the impressive results from HIMSS 2016 for Microsoft in Health: 

• Teamsent more than 350 tweets and postsviaTwitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
• This year we more than doubled the engagement(2,532 engagements on Twitter v. 1134 in 2015)
• Realand potential reach of 8.95 million
• Goalforweekfor 17 million real and potential impressions; met and exceeded by 3 million for a total of over 20.7 million real and potential impressions

Metia has several years of specialized experience in working with healthcare IT companies on their marketing including Microsoft in Health, Seattle Children's and Intel Health & Life Sciences. We have put together a handy 'How to Guide' on the "Nine things that every healthcare technology marketer should know".