In a previous editorial, we had the opportunity to connect with Jocelyn Brown, Senior Director of Account Management at Eloqua. Jocelyn opened up on her role in managing client relationships and shared her excitement on the upcoming Eloqua Experience 2012 user conference in November.

This week we were thrilled to connect with Lauren Harper, Community Manager and Social Media Engagement Extraordinaire at Eloqua. Lauren shared details on her role at Eloqua, how she uses social media platforms to drive results, and what she is looking forward to most at the upcoming user conference.

Can you provide us with a little background on your role at Eloqua?

I am the Community Manager responsible for running the day-to-day operations on Eloqua’s social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+. I also help create the overall strategy on these channels, along with providing assistance to our internal customer community on Topliners.

In my role, I must make sure that we’re consistent with activity on our social media platforms by tweeting every day, responding to comments and feedback, and making sure users know of any glitches they may encounter.

How do you use social media to draw attendees to events such as the upcoming Eloqua Experience 2012?

There’s a lot of creativity involved to be able to draw attention and drive registrations toward events. This is especially true when it comes to the language that is being used.

Also, the timing can be important on when to share a link. A lot of people tend to share something once thinking that everyone is on the platform the same time that the link is posted. This is why it’s important to share content at different times and also make sure to change up the messaging to catch more readers.

What’s also important to consider is the platform’s audience you’re sharing content to as well. For instance, messaging shared on LinkedIn is vastly different than the 140 character limit on Twitter which can include hashtags. The same holds true with content shared on Facebook – which is less of a formal platform than LinkedIn- at least for us.

Overall, while consistency with posting on all platforms and creativity are key, we truly value quality more than quantity. We find that we get more out of educating and engaging an audience to comment or ask a question versus someone just simply liking our Facebook page than disappearing – although we do like having folks ‘like’ our page.

Any specific social media strategies you will be using at Eloqua Experience 2012? 

Yes, it’s important to make sure that we’re engaging in real time with our audience, even for those who could not make it to the event. For example, we will be doing things like real-time tweeting and live blogging to let our audience know what is going on. We will also post a recap article on our “It’s All About Revenue” blog highlighting a recent presentation someone may have missed.

We also like to do things such as polls to drive engagement, along with pictures and multi-media content pre and post event to keep the experience on everyone’s mind.

What are you looking forward to most at Eloqua Experience 2012 and why?

I’m excited to see some of the keynote speakers at the event as well as the highly anticipated Markies. In fact, we have a rather interesting Pinterest board titled, Where Does Your Markie Live? This creative board features pictures from past winners on where they have their awards placed.

Ultimately, we are extremely proud of the work our clients have done and we are excited just to be a part of it.