For the Long Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB), social media is anything but an afterthought. It is a hard-worked strategy meant to establish and foster relationships in an effort to accomplish the CVB’s main objective: bringing people to Long Beach, whether for business or leisure.

 

According to Digital Communications Director Loren Simpson, the growth of the CVB’s social media division is due to Steve Goodling, president and CEO, recognizing the value of communicating via social media before its use was as mainstream as it is today.

The Long Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau’s all-Millennial digital communications team runs the organization’s separate social media accounts aimed at meeting planners and visitors, as well as those of the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center and its Terrace Theater. Pictured, from left, are: Jamie Weeks, digital communications manager; Loren Simpson digital communications director; and Erica Morris, digital communications manager. (Photograph by the Business Journal’s Larry Duncan)

 

“It’s refreshing to see that people understand the power of social media because it’s very powerful,” Simpson said. “It’s so important. It’s vital. That’s why so many large organizations and companies have a department dedicated to it.”

 

Assisting Simpson with the CVB’s social media efforts are digital communications managers Erica Morris, who started a year ago, and Jamie Weeks, who was first hired to the CVB as an intern about three years ago.

 

Morris manages the Terrace Theater’s social media accounts, as well as the Meet in Long Beach accounts, which are aimed at meeting and convention planners and attendees. Weeks covers the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center’s social media handles and assists Simpson with the leisure travel oriented Visit Long Beach accounts. Each of these are found on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

 

Through the Meet in Long Beach handle, Morris coordinates with CVB remote staff working trade shows in other cities to help attract more people to the CVB’s booths. “We try to help them drive attendance to their booth and meet new people by doing some social media campaigns,” she said. “So we just encourage people: hey, go to our booth. Take a selfie. Post it with our hashtags.”

 

This year, the CVB launched a new social media campaign for its Meet in Long Beach accounts. “One that we have been doing lately is Choose Your Chucks,” Morris said, referring to Converse Chuck Taylor shoes. At trade shows, visitors to CVB booths are encouraged to take a photo and post it with a specific hashtag to get a chance to win the sneakers. This both generates new social media traffic to the Meet in Long Beach accounts and incentivizes people to interact with the CVB.

 

“It has actually gotten a lot of good traction. People, once they have won, they want to tweet back out how they have customized their shoes,” Morris said. In one instance, the campaign resulted in a connection at a San Francisco trade show – the winner, who was a meeting planner, and a CVB sales executive ended up having a lunch meeting, Morris noted. At that two-day trade show alone, the Choose Your Chucks campaign generated 370,000 social media impressions.

 

The Meet in Long Beach handle is also used to communicate with conventioneers and meetings professionals who are visiting Long Beach. “Something that we do with our meeting planners and attendees is, across all channels, we personalize welcome messages to each of them,” Weeks said.

 

“A lot of the conferences have their own hashtags,” Morris said. “So we’re going in when they’re in Long Beach, and we’re responding to people who are tweeting about either being in Long Beach or the conference.”

 

When a convention is in town, the CVB’s social media team monitors various social media channels for specific hashtags related to the event, as well as geo-tagged photos and location check-ins. They then reach out to the posters to make them feel welcome, an effort Simpson likened to concierge service. “So when they are putting out those ‘Wonder what I should have for lunch or breakfast’ [posts], we’re like, ‘Well, we’ve got suggestions for you,’” she explained.

 

Simpson noted that if a convention planner needs assistance growing registrations for his or her event, the CVB’s social media team will create a coordinated campaign designed to achieve that end.

 

The team views social media as another tool in the CVB’s business strategy – one that helps open doors in an unassuming manner that a cold call could not. “It’s like a friendly way of getting in and saying hi versus beating down on doors or phone calls. It makes it more comfortable,” Simpson said.

 

The Visit Long Beach social media handle is used in a similar fashion, with staff scanning social media for posts related to Long Beach so they can reach out and be welcoming or of assistance to visitors or tourists.

 

Visit Long Beach is also used to get people interested in visiting the city. “We do a lot of targeted posts. So if we know that someone can drive two hours and be here, then we are making sure that we are targeting that audience,” Simpson said.

 

“And when big articles like from Thrillist or LA Weekly are talking about any of our restaurants, we are pushing that out too, showing people we’re not just like a sister city to Los Angeles,” Weeks added.

 

Visit Long Beach’s social media accounts are the principal vehicles for the CVB’s Beach with Benefits campaign, a summer sweepstakes in which winners receive VIP hotel stays and visits to Long Beach attractions. Beach with Benefits also features smaller contests year-round.

 

“We use social media also as our way of pitching things too,” Simpson said, noting that the Visit Long Beach handle is used to reach out to digital influencers with many followers, publications and other outlets.

 

“We have a lot of people – once we have reached out to them and responded to those tweets – who will say back to us like, ‘We had the greatest time,’ or, ‘Hit our record attendance,’” Weeks said. “And I think it just helps them develop or feel like they are developing a personal relationship with us and the city. And they want to come back to somewhere they feel welcome.”

 

Simpson reflected, “It’s tons of strategy and planning and work. But in the end if it opens up a door for our sales department or it assists in someone trying to plan their summer vacation and they choose Long Beach versus somewhere else, I mean, it makes all the difference for us.”