On the weekend of September 2 – September 5, 2016, your organization celebrates 30 years of hosting the annual Dragon Con event in Atlanta. Billed as the world’s largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction & fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the universe, the event itself has grown into a pop culture phenomenon attended by thousands of devoted fans each year. In fact, 70,000 Dragon Con devotees are expected to arrive in downtown Atlanta attend the Con this year.
What makes this event unique, is that it is “organized for fans by fans…and features more than 3,000 hours of comics, film, television, costuming, art, music and gaming over four days” (according to a recent dragoncon.org press release). Two new events take place this year: The first Dragon Con Awards, which according to the DragonCon.org website “recognize the best in imaginative fiction, books, games, comics and filmed entertainment as selected by the fans”. And secondly, the CW channel in Atlanta will broadcast the Dragon Con Parade for the first time this year.
This report will address the following questions you had regarding the effectiveness of your marketing efforts this year in reaching your target audience. Specifically, we’ll be looking at 1) the social media conversation surrounding the inaugural Dragon Con Awards, and 2) audience reaction to the first public broadcast of the parade on Atlanta’s CW Channel 69. Next, we’ll broaden the scope to include 3) research on topics such as demographics, keywords, and hashtags used in social media regarding the Con, and 4) look at the overall tone of this year’s online “Con”versation.
Parameters: The specific criteria used for each of the above four areas in this report will be included at the beginning of each section’s data results. We’ll be using a combination of tools for our analysis, including the native search functions of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as several social media analytics tools including keyhole.co, buzzsumo.com, TweetReach, and talkwalker.com. It’s our belief the most relevant analysis is accomplished through both personally looking at and categorizing social media interactions, as well as using analytics tools which allow for a greater volume of data observation.
Speaking of social analytics tools, Marketingprofs reported the following data:
“The survey of 125 marketers found that 60% of respondents use social media analytics tools for campaign tracking, 48% for brand analysis, and 40% for competitive intelligence. A large number also use social media analytics tools for customer care (36%), product launches (32%), and influencer ranking (27%).”
THE DATA
Awards
Using the social analytics tool keyhole.co in combination with the native search function on Twitter, we analyzed approximately 250 tweets covering the period of 4/4 through 9/4/16. This encompasses the timeframe from when the awards were announced on Twitter and includes tweets occurring through 3 p.m. on the actual day of awards.
Some quick stats:
- 255 posts
- 72 users
- 273,502 reach
- 875,484 impressions
Next, we did a keyword search on Twitter for posts using the keywords Dragon Con and awards. The pie charts below reflect these findings:
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Parade
Using the social analytics app BuzzSumo.com we looked specifically at posts mentioning the Dragon Con Parade for the 24 hour period surrounding the actual parade date of September 3. This app looks at articles, videos, infographics, guest posts, and interviews that are shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+. Please note: This reflects rankings as they appeared within the first 24 hours of posting, these will be expected to grow and fluctuate as they continue to be shared.
TOP 5 SHARED ARTICLES/VIDEOS/INFOGRAPHICS ON 9/3/16
On the day of the parade, the #1 most shared of these was an article on WSBtv.com, “Costumed characters fill the streets for the Dragon Con Parade” and was shared by 750 Facebook users. 
The 2nd most shared item was an article posted by hugely popular New York Times best-selling author of fiction and epic fantasy literature (plus adjunct professor of creative writing at Brigham Young University), Brandon Sanderson. His blog post announcing the schedule of events he would be hosting at this year’s Con was shared 185 times, on both Facebook and Twitter.
The 3rd most shared item was a :17 live video of the parade posted by this year’s Grand Marshal, actor “Eddie McClintock” of Warehouse 13 fame (plus Bones & A Fish Story) via YouTube.
Coming in 4th with a post of 98 Cosplay Photos from this year’s event was the pop culture media channel comingsoon.net.
Rounding out the top 5 was the article Dragon Con Returns to Atlanta in the Lifestyles section of the ajc.com, which was shared 75 times via Facebook.
Demographics/Keywords/Hashtags
For our section on demographics, keywords, hashtags, reach, and impressions we’ll be using the keyhole.co app to look at 2500+ tweets and Instagram posts. Filters were used to limit results to the United States, and the English language.
Tone and Scope of Conversations
Since the main feature of Dragon Con is its highly visual nature, as evidenced by the fans who attend in costumes reflecting their favorite characters, we will focus our overall tone research on three visual-friendly social media outlets: Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. These three sites are commonly used by participants to share photographs and video and should constitute a representative sampling of photos and videos shared by Dragon Con attendees.
In addition to utilizing the site-specific search functions of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for the dates of August 28 – September 3rd, we used the TweetReach app by Union Metrics to look at a snapshot featuring the most recent 100 tweets and the talkwalker.com app to examine the top 100 tweets during the same week-long period. These were analyzed in order to see common themes and keywords used in the conversations taking place in the week leading up to the event and including the first several days of Dragon Con.
The hashtag search results gleaned from our TweetReach and talkwalker.com research were very similar to our examination of 2600 tweets using keyhole.com and included #dragoncon2016, #dragoncon, #cosplay, #cosplayer, #pokemon, #THE100, #Star Wars, #darkmatter, #photo, #video, #marvel, #gameofthrones, #izombie, #strangerthings, #elfhater, #pokemonGO, #ROTJ, #Buffy, #joker, #artistalley, #farscape, #starwarsrebels, #deadpool, #gotham, #startrek, #grimm, #gamers, #nerds, and #atlanta.
The overall tone of the thousands of Tweets we examined was approximately 92% positive and/or neutral and reflected a high level of engagement on the part of participants. Over 35% of the original Tweets posted with the hashtags #dragoncon and #dragoncon2016 were retweeted, or shared with fellow Twitter users. A great many posts expressed sentiments related to the various panels taking place during the convention, with expressions of excitement about seeing celebrity presenters, reflections of how well the panelists performed, and an overall positive experience surrounding the panels in general.
- 340 influencers were actively tweeting using the hashtag #dragoncon
SUMMARY
As evidenced by the high level of engagement your organization has cultivated with convention attendees, it is clear you have an excellent marketing model in place for maximizing the social media platforms of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. During the event itself, your organization consistently demonstrates a strong commitment to real-time two-way communication as reflected in the large number of retweets and likes by the official @dragoncon Twitter account.
The articles and media postings that ranked in the top shared categories demonstrate a balanced mix of regular people, bloggers and influencers, local and regional media, and national websites. This will accomplish the goal of retaining loyal fans while simultaneously reaching out to your target audience for future attendees.
Through the research conducted, we have developed two recommendations we believe can assist in taking your future efforts to the next level on Twitter and other social media outlets.
1. Increase future marketing efforts related to the Dragon Con Awards. Compared to the buzz surrounding the parade and the Con in general, the Dragon Con awards received relatively few mentions in social media. Unlike other Con hashtags, females were under-represented in award postings, with males representing 86% of the posters, which is atypical. In our research we also noticed the lack of a specific hashtag being used to actively promote the awards. Finally, we discovered an existing organization using the hashtag #dragonawards, see below graphic.
Additionally, this lack of information was reflected in some of the tweets regarding the awards:
For these reasons, we recommend the creation of a hashtag to be used specifically for all conversations focusing on next year’s 2017 Dragon Con Awards. This hashtag could be actively promoted and featured on the ballots, in press releases, and other marketing materials.
2. Continue bringing new and surprising twists to the convention. These add to the sense of excitement and mystery surrounding the Con. This year’s internet streaming of DragonConTV to members throughout the official convention hotels was innovative, as was the momentous airing of the Parade on the CW channel in Atlanta. And of course, the inaugural Dragon Con Awards. Focusing on bringing new, exciting additions to the convention each year will continue to grow your attendance.
We have enjoyed analyzing the social media conversations taking place around #DragonCon2016 and hope our analysis will provide insights to your organization. Thank you for your time and please let us know if we can be of further assistance in your digital marketing efforts.
Digital Writing and Social Media 