Aerospace eBusiness

Heli-Expo 2010: An Experiment in Social Media March 3, 2010

Posted by ludozone in Aerospace, Conference, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Twitter.
Tags: Aerospace, HeliExpo, Social Media, Twitter
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The annual HeliExpo took place in Houston last week. Although this is already the largest helicopter event in the world with 16,000 visitors and 595 exhibitors, it was interesting to see how it also played out on the web, before and during the show. As usual, I was online to watch, measure and evaluate. Here is my take.

THE HELICOPTER INDUSTRY MEDIA

As always, the industry media was present at the show. However, it was strange to see a very different dynamic than at the recent Singapore or Dubai airshows. Unlike Aviation International News which put out a similar coverage than at the other shows, AviationWeek and Flight Global were relatively quieter.

	Articles	Blog Entries	Photos	Videos
AINonline	130	0	124	7
AviationWeek	0	29	51	0
Flight Global	17	0	0	14
HeliHub.com	143*	0	0	0
Rotor and Wing	0	10	55	20

*Reposts from other sources

AIN produced the most professional videos through their affiliate AINtv which was contracted especially for the show. Rotor and Wing and Flight Global produced lesser quality videos with some major editing and sound issues in a few of them. Rotor and Wing posted their videos on YouTube which made them show up in Google searches although the tagging was not uniform (e.g. why not use HeliExpo10 as a tag?).

AIN was the only news organization that used the #HE10 twitter feed to aggressively promote their content online with 143 posts throughout the show. AviationWeek and Flight Global managed less than 20 posts each (in the stream). However, Flight Global had a Twitter widget on their show page that was tracking the “Heli Expo” keyword so they managed to capture a good portion of the conversation. The other news organizations posted from their twitter accounts but never used the #HE10 tag despite several attempts to contact them to correct the issue. This seems like a lost opportunity especially for HeliHub and Rotor and Wing which have relatively small followings (500 and 800 respectively).

At the end of the show, a quick online survey was generated by @Heli_Expo. Although the participation was low, the results (available in PDF) show that “Article from News Organizations” is by far the most important use of Twitter by professionals in our industry. Even though I believe this will eventually change, I think smaller online news outfits should pay more attention to HOW they use twitter for shows like this. They should definitely use the hashtags so they can be read by a group larger than their followers. They should also post shorter tweets that can be reposted without editing. For example, @HeliHub should limit their original posts to a maximum of 127 characters since any repost will take an additional 13 characters for the prefix “RT @HeliHub: “ . This is actually a good tip for any organization that posts on Twitter and wants a chance to be re-tweeted.

THE EXHIBITORS

Speaking about other organizations on Twitter, an amazing 77 HeliExpo exhibitors had twitter accounts. @Heli_Expo created a very convenient Twitter List of all the exhibitor accounts. Even though this media is new to most of them, some have embraced it quiet nicely as showed by the top contributors to the #HE10 stream:

	Tweets	Exhibitor?
HAImandy	181	Organizer
AINonline	131	Yes
HELI_expo	111
HON_Carrie (Honeywell)	41	Yes
FSIrivet	30	Yes
roadshownews	21
GPS4aircraft	16	Yes
DakotaAirParts	13	Yes
dnpixl	13
CNTV	12
bbryon	9
embryriddle	8	Yes

I was shocked that more of them did not take advantage of this medium which overall had good activity. There were 670 posts from 51 different accounts in the #HE10 stream. But many companies do not even advertise they have a Twitter account on their home page, even when their account is relatively active (See DakotaAirParts).

Also absent from the #HE10 stream were the Helicopter manufacturers. Five of them have official Twitter accounts: @SikorskyAircraft, @Eurocopter_EADS, @one_bell, @MDHelicopters, and @RusHeliCo. Sikorsky and Eurocopter were the most active while Bell and MD fell silent for some strange reason. I think that was a big mistake when you analyze how Sikorsky approached the use of Twitter at the event.

Sikorsky published 15 press releases around HeliExpo starting with one announcing their Twitter page. The press release contained the strongest endorsement of Twitter by any Aerospace & Defense company to date. Since they had created their account back in December, they opened the show with already over 200 followers as opposed to Eurocopter’s less than 50.

Even though they didn’t use the #HE10 tag, they posted 32 updates during the show. They pushed their press releases, but also targeted the audience at the show by posting booth schedule updates. Despite attempts by several users to dialog with them, they did not respond probably because they have not yet figured out how to make Twitter a two-way channel. This is typical of organizations that are new to this.

But the discussion ABOUT Sikorsky was tremendous and much bigger than for any of their competitors. The keyword “Sikorsky” was mentioned 654 times during the show from 329 different accounts. Their posts were re-tweeted 21 times by 8 different accounts to a total of 1928 followers. Ten of Sikorsky’s press releases were also broadcasted 139 times on twitter directly by 81 different accounts to a total audience of 128,344 followers. That is a tremendous online exposure that all exhibitors should be tapping into. There is no way to know how much bigger these numbers would have been if Sikorsky had used #HE10. Sikorsky has now set the standard, so how can a company like MD Helicopters afford not to jump on Twitter?

THE ORGANIZERS

HeliExpo is organized by the Helicopter Association International. I contacted them before the show to see if they had any social media plans for Houston. Mandy Stahl, a Membership Assistant at HAI, pointed me to her Twitter stream @HAImandy and indicated she had be allowed to post updates before and during the show whenever her regular duties permitted it. From the Twitter stats above as well as the survey results, you can see she did a tremendous job. She also indicated that although the association owned the @HeliExpo account, they were not going to use it. Furthermore, Mandy’s account was not advertised in any official HeliExpo communication from HAI. I thought that was a great loss of opportunity for them.

So I decided to experiment…

Unbeknownst to HAI, I created the @Heli_Expo account at the beginning of February and started posting about the event in the way I thought it should be done. I was careful never to represent the account as being an official account, only using it to promote the event. As I mentioned before, I created a list of exhibitors and posted heavily in the #HE10 stream. I complemented what Mandy was posting avoiding duplicating her work. I worked along three avenues:

1. Help the exhibitors by reposting their information in the stream, sending them practical local information, and encouraging companies that should have been exhibiting to do so next year.
2. Help the attendees by posting HeliExpo news and information posted on the web into the #HE10 stream. For example, I found several videos and articles on Google that were not on Twitter so I posted links.
3. Help the organizers by re-posting show information from their own website such as staff photos and event schedule, as well as promoting Mandy’s account and her work.

@Heli_Expo Twitter Followers

I limited my invested time to 60 hours before the show (mostly on researching the exhibitor list) and 20 hours during the show. I was not physically in Houston and created very little original content. I used only free tools and platforms. The response was tremendous. Many companies and news organizations started following the account and interacting directly with it. The account was recommended multiple times and my posts were re-tweeted to a large following. I can only imagine what the exposure would have been like if this had been an official effort advertised and coordinated by HAI.

I will now send Mandy the passwords to the accounts so HAI can take them over, but I think I have demonstrated to them and other Aerospace associations that a small time investment and a concerted approach can give them a much greater exposure online especially for events like this.

Why let others tell the story of your event when you can steer the conversation yourself? Are you listening Farnborough?