National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC) - The Global Social Media Audience

Case Study

By Fields Jackson

Challenge

I (@fleejack) along with fellow Racing Toward Diversity advisory Board members Lyria Howland, CEO, Howland PR, MaryAnne Howland, CEO, IBIS Communications and Bob Ontiveros, CEO, Group O Companies attended the 2011 NMSDC Business Opportunity Fair October 30 - November 2, held at the Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, GA.

The event with over 8,000 attendees and 700 exhibitors included most of America's largest publicly owned, privately owned companies, universities, hospitals and other buying institutions. Could Racing Toward Diversity through our attendance help push a social media message out to a global audience?

Solution

Demonstrate Racing Toward Diversity's social media reach. Met with representatives of companies that have been featured in Racing Toward Diversity magazine @ATT, @HP, @PitneyBowes, @RedCross, @ApexComputing and attended several sessions, broadcast from the NMSDC via Twitter and Twitpic.

Results

HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Twitter #Hashtags

May 17, 2009 by Ben Parr

One of the most complex features of Twitter for new users to understand is the hashtag, a topic with a hash symbol (“#”) at the start to identify it. Twitter hashtags like #followfriday help spread information on Twitter while also helping to organize it.

The hashtag is a favorite tool of conferences and event organizers, but it’s also a way for Twitter users to organize themselves: if everyone agrees to append a certain hashtag to tweets about a topic, it becomes easier to find that topic in search, and more likely the topic will appear in Twitter’s Trending Topics.

For this event NMSDC created the #NMSDC2011 HashTag

 

#NMSDC2011 HashTracking.com Report

 

331 tweets generated 1,084,673 impressions, reaching an audience of 464,531 followers within the past 24 hours

 

Top 10 by number of impressions

1.     fleejack: 523,565

2.     magicjohnson: 331,604

3.     brianmoran: 91,454

4.     mbemag: 29,640

5.     ldscott: 20,515

6.     briantippens: 16,184

7.     toosmartgirls: 12,928

8.     dorestaurant: 11,700

9.     micheleruiz01: 7,670

10.   thehautegroup: 7,320

 

Top 10 by number of tweets

1.     mbemag: 52

2.     fleejack: 49

3.     foodbevgroup: 34

4.     nestlediversity: 23

5.     toosmartgirls: 16

6.     dorestaurant: 15

7.     rtdsocialmedia: 13

8.     thehautegroup: 12

9.     jaimelevvintre: 12

10.   mbmlbt: 11

 

 

"There were many important messages that we were able to push out to our audience beyond those in the room via social media.  One very important message is that corporations are interested in greening their supply chain.  Social media is green!"

 

MaryAnne Howland

CEO

IBIS Communications

 

“The atmosphere at NMSDC was electric!  That’s the power of thousands of like-minded business people making connections happen!”

 

Lyria Howland

CEO

Howland PR

 

"As a 30 year member of the NMSDC, it was gratifying to see the way MBE’s and Corporations embraced the new, ”Norm” of Social media, and how it created such Buzz among all the attendees, even old timers like myself participating with our major clients, AT&T, it was amazing to see and be part of this new marketing, and shows how MBE’s are embracing Technology, and connecting with their clients."

 

Bob Ontiveros

CEO

Group O, Inc