Omni Nashville Grand Opening – National Hashtag Trending

The Omni Nashville Hotel opening presented one of the biggest social challenges I’ve ever faced: make the biggest online splash surrounding the opening of ONE hotel. The hotel is a beauty; situated in the heart of Nashville, connected to the Country Music Hall of Fame, and full of beautiful architecture and music memorabilia…so there was plenty to point a camera at. Unfortunately, the opening coincided with several things that were going on that night: the Obamacare announcement, a government shutdown, The Voice and Monday Night Football.

So how do you get in the feeds of potential brand fans and travel enthusiasts during one of the busiest online nights of the week, nay, year? Well, here’s what I did.

A two-pronged approach, synchronized. A national open sweepstakes for a weekend at the hotel, and the same for a targeted group of Nashville influencers I recruited to come have dinner in the hotel on opening night. Here were my steps.

  • I created the open sweepstakes based on a point system for posting (blog and social channels), tweeting and retweeting, with a set time period leading up to the opening, and concentrated on a specific time during the dinner. Points earned entries to the sweeps, the more you posted, the more entries you could earn. Random draw for a winner from all entries.
  • I publicized the event and sweepstakes on Omni social channels, blog, OH.com and email.
  • 4 days before opening I stayed in the empty hotel, running around photographing all the accents and memorabilia on the property, and created content and a content calendar (down to the second!) for posting.
  • I sourced great influencers from my time at Business 2 Blogger, where I had helped create and run a small agency that paired bloggers with brands for campaigns.
  • On opening night, my influencers arrived to a private dining room in Kitchen Notes where I had set up a desk for myself alongside their banquet table – they had a grand old time eating, drinking and connecting while I furiously posted content for them to repost and retweet at the same time sweepstakes entrants were doing the same across the country. That critical mass of conversation was reached due to not-so-simple coordination.
  • The result? We trended #OmniNashville nationally and in Nashville.
  • REACH: 905.3K
  • IMPRESSIONS: 5.7M
  • TWEETS: 3300
  • Contributors: 650

One of my fantastic local influencers did a nice article covering it afterward, you’ll find it here.