THE RULES OF ONLINE AND SOCIAL COMMUNICATION AT A BTC SEMINAR
Italy’s events exhibition offers an education session with a company specialising in digital marketing in Asia to help Italian companies approach emerging markets with a complete awareness of which tools to use to successfully communicate with them.BTC, Italy’s events exhibition, scheduled to take place at Fortezza da Basso in Florence on 11-12 November, includes a highly topical seminar in its rich educational programme this year.
It is entitled Communicating in China and Russia by using local search engines and social networks: the cross-cultural approach, and is organised by Emanuele Vitali, sales & marketing director of East Media, a company that specialises exclusively in digital marketing in Asia and in particular local search engines and social media.
The concept
China and Russia are very important markets for Italy, with enormous opportunities and a potential that has yet to be fully exploited, both in the incoming tourism and events sectors. Computer users in China and Russia, who choose the internet to search for information and taking purchase and travel decisions, use, however, an independent digital ecosystem that differs from the one in the west. Since Google is not used, operators have to ensure they are indexed on local search engines; as users are not on western social networks, operators must be present on the local sites. Instant messaging platforms (such as our Whatsapp) are also different, and commercially more developed. Communication with these users, whose languages and cultures are very different from our own, must be developed on cross-cultural models to be effective.
The seminar
The seminar will look at some of the general trends in business-oriented digital communication, and will then analyse the specific digital environment of China and Russia, exploring what local search engines and social networks there are, and how they work; finally, it will set out a series of considerations on cross-cultural issues, i.e. how to use these engines and social networks, and how to formulate effective brand communication taking into account the cultural differences and the different models of reference, with concrete examples of western company communication and social campaigns that have succeeded or failed.
The seminar is aimed at both supply-side meeting & incentive operators (typically event agencies, hotels and hotel chains, convention bureaus and destination management companies) and demand-side representatives, which come to BTC in very large numbers, mainly from abroad: marketing and communication professionals, sales managers, customer care providers, heads of web/online/digital and social media projects, international business development directors and managers, CEOs, export managers, and finance and control managers. The seminar is another example of the quality of BTC’s educational offer, which surpasses the now obsolete boundaries of the meetings segment and can confidently address the country’s industrial sector as a whole.www.btc.it
BTC is the only Italian exhibition dedicated to events, meetings, conventions and incentive programmes. It is the largest B2B marketplace between international demand and Italian supply. In 2013, it was visited by 6,724 professionals over two days.
Trade visitors include event managers; meeting planners; marketing & communication managers; corporate purchasing managers; association event managers; trade unions and political parties; incentive houses; communication agencies; PCOs (professional congress organisers); travel agencies with events and conferences departments. Two thirds of the hosted buyers come from abroad (mostly from Europe but also from markets from further afield with high purchasing power such as the US, Brazil, India, China, Japan) and one third comes from Italy. 50% are independent professionals and 50% are corporate.
BTC takes place in a totally business-to-business environment, featuring debates, networking, negotiations and pre-scheduled appointments between supply- and demand-side operators. It has a strongly international flavour, and gives Italian professionals the opportunity to learn about international best practice as well as to meet international demand in order to provide major products and services for successful events.
BTC is organised by Exmedia Ltd., a company 95%-owned by TTG Italy Ltd. (Rimini Fiera Group), Italy’s leading provider of communication services for the tourism industry.
