As the effects of COVID-19 were felt by individuals and organizations worldwide, the way in which we work was drastically altered. Despite the unprecedented situation, we continued to support our clients by providing the insights, advice, and tools to help them achieve their mission-critical priorities.
Gartner’s social media & employer brand team is responsible for creating and implementing a global external communications strategy to support corporate marketing, conferences and recruiting initiatives across social media channels and a variety of other platforms. As our organization shifted the way in which we deliver research and insights to our clients, our team also adapted accordingly.
Our corporate social media team found themselves promoting COVID-19 related research and expert insights to help C-level executives navigate change. Our conferences team pivoted from supporting Gartner’s in-person, destination conference offerings to a fully virtual experience. Our employer brand team focused on promoting the employee experience to attract top talent as we shifted to remote work as an organization and maintained a positive company culture
Through a variety of creative social media campaigns, we were able to execute on our goals and continue to promote Gartner’s brand to clients, prospects, associates and potential candidates worldwide.
During times of increased pressure, our clients look to us to provide unbiased, objective insights, so they can make the right decisions for their organizations with confidence. It is for this reason that Gartner’s research and advisory team developed the COVID-19 Resource Center and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Resource Center to provide clients with complimentary access to our findings on these topics.
Gartner’s social media team worked to promote both assets organically via our practice area specific accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter, on Instagram and through our employee advocacy program by customizing messaging to appeal to C-suite executives around the world. If you were a CIO or CFO there was specific advice directed at you, for you to help you navigate COVID-19 within your organization.
We showcased the virtual conference experience, both with pre-promotions and during-conference virtual coverage in the form of LinkedIn Live and Twitter Live session streams. Gartner ITSymposium/Xpo is the largest gathering of CIOs and IT executives worldwide, typically held in 7 regions. In 2021, we focused on bringing conference sessions to our larger social audiences by leveraging LinkedIn Live and encouraging use of #GartnerSYM to drum up online conversation and answer attendee questions. We were first to help virtual attendees learn how to navigate the new software and overall virtual experience.
Our employer brand team focused communications on the impact our associates were able to make globally, highlighting the work of our conferences, consulting, sales and research and advisory teams via the Gartner Careers blog and on social media. The team also launched the Inner Workings podcast in July 2020, to help candidates learn about our company, our culture and our people by sharing dynamic, raw, real stories in digestible clips. As a company, Gartner supported their associates by moving to a full remote work environment in March. This created challenges in creating new video shoots or photography sessions, so the team used the new marketing mediums as a way to overcome these situations.
Our team’s objectives include attracting, engaging and converting prospects into Marketing and Conferences cultivation programs to accelerate growth and attracting, engaging and converting quality candidates into the recruitment process to support Talent Acquisition.
Our 2020 social media campaign promoting the COVID-19 Resource Center and latest Gartner research resulted in almost 25,000+ visits to gartner.com. In addition it drove hundreds of form completions and completed Become A Client forms. Associate shares of the COVID-19 Resource Center through our employee advocacy program resulted in many visits to gartner.com and helped clients and prospects quickly find the information needed.
Our pre-event conference coverage drove over 9,000+ sessions to conference marketing websites from campaigns, Linkedin Lives and live conference coverage. Our LinkedIn Live campaign in support of this year’s virtual conference portfolio resulted in 330,000+ impressions and 115,000+ views (July-December).
The employer brand program produced 145 blog articles, 1,700+ social media posts, 6 podcast episodes in 2020, resulting in 1.1 million visits to our careers website, 161,000+ visits to our blog, 1,000+ podcast downloads and a number of hires.
In 2020, Gartner’s total social marketable universe grew 18% YoY to 1,720,000 individual followers, continuing to drive brand awareness amongst candidates, clients and prospects.
