FIT Show gets social
Sarah Ball, social media expert in the glazing industry, was invited to talk at the recent FIT Show exhibitors’ day. Here are her top tips for exhibitors to get the most from FIT Show and what visitors are looking for from their time at the show.
FIT Show has more than 5,000 followers on Twitter, 1,000 on Facebook, 650 on LinkedIn and 100 on Instagram – and the numbers continue to grow. The latest information is always released first on social media by FIT Show, so followers know it’s the very best place to keep up to date. So, whether you’re an exhibitor or visitor at FIT Show this year, you’ll get more out of it by getting involved through social media.
You can see by the numbers that Twitter is the most popular platform. It’s easy to get involved and exhibitors’ tweets will potentially reach an extra 5,000 interested people.
Exhibitors should plan to post at least once or twice a day between now and the show. To save time, posts can be written in batches and scheduled using tools like Sprout Social or Hootsuite.
It’s sometimes difficult to think of what to write, so I’ve come up with 10 categories to get exhibitors started. Don’t forget to tag in @fitshow or use #FITShow2017 in every tweet.
- Countdown in weeks, days, hours, minutes and even seconds. Make it fun with photos of the FIT Show written in your calendar or diary.
- Free tickets. Include the unique registration URLs sent by FIT Show.
- Find us at @fitshow – include the stand number, hall and who are you close to.
- Launching a new product or service? Promote anything new that’s happening on your stand.
- Meet our team at @fitshow. Say who’s on the stand and include photos of the team.
- Throwback Thursday #TBT. If exhibitors have been at FIT Show before put up photos of your stand at previous shows
- #FITInstallation – this is a photo competition that can be entered by anyone. Enter your installation pictures or encourage your customers to enter – #February #March #April. They’re judged every month until April.
- Freebies – everyone loves something free – it can be anything. For example, if it was us we’d tweet: “Come to our stand A1 in Hall 6 and pick up a free guide on social Media.”
- Competitions – enter on the stand to win. Let people know what they can win by coming to your stand.
- #MrMrsFIT. This year’s fun comes in the shape of Mrs and Mrs FIT – a cardboard couple to share on Twitter. Exhibitors have been sent these in the post. Photograph them joining in with the build-up to FIT. It could be visiting the stand designers, shopping for cushions, uploading a blog or sending out invites.
After Twitter, the next best place to post is LinkedIn. Keep company pages updated with all press releases and news around FIT Show in the build-up to the exhibition. Companies can tag in FIT Show in the same way as you do on Twitter by putting the @ sign in front. The same content categories as Twitter can be used, but it’s worth making them longer.
These can then be liked and shared from personal profiles, and comments can be added. This area of LinkedIn is really growing, and company profiles are becoming more prominent. Tagging people and companies can be done in the same way as Twitter.
Aim for a minimum of one post a week.
Get friendly on Facebook
Facebook isn’t the most obvious platform for B2B social media but there are lots of people in the glazing industry on Facebook who use it daily. Company posts get liked and shared in the same way as LinkedIn. But there’s room to add in more about the team.
One to three posts a week is fine for Facebook with FIT Show tagged in.
Don’t forget Instagram
Don’t spend too much time on this one at the moment – but it’s a really good opportunity to get started. Create a hashtag bank to make it easy to post. If you have anything you can buy or order online this could well be your top platform for driving e-commerce in the future. Looking at fashion and food there’s already a massive following. It’s not quite got there with other sectors, but they’re investing into making it far more commercial.
So, if you’ve got inspirational pictures, get started right now. Instagramers love a lifestyle photo and the number of likes is far greater on Instagram than Twitter for these. Here are a few suggestions to get started: #FITShow #Glazing #Exhibition #NEC #Windows #Doors.
Get started
These are some top tips of how exhibitors can give more information to visitors to the FIT Show. Companies at the exhibitor briefing received a handy guide, if you’d like one, email me on sarah@balls2marketing.com and I’ll send you a copy.
