Academic conferences promotion process and social media. Modeling of the problem

Abstract

Social networks are now a crucial part of today's way of life. Academic conferences is another chapter, that give people the opportunity to explore new ideas and share them with the scientific world. Blending those two factors together in order to achieve a main purpose, could give a remarkable effect. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the promotion process of academic conferences through social media and use simulation models to modelize that analysis. The reason the paper was created, is to provide this optimal solution to all those seeking how to promote academic conferences effectively through social media. Thorough research through the paper revealed that social media, nowadays used by millions and millions of users can be successfully used to promote academic papers and with great appeal.

Full text

International Journal of Strategic Innovative Marketing
Vol. 02 (2015) DOI:10.15556/IJSIM.02.01.006
60
Academic conferences promotion
process and social media. Modeling of
the problem
John Hlias Plikas1,a, Nasiopoulos K. Dimitrios1, Hlias Plikas2
1University of Peloponnese, Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, Tripolis, 22100,
Greece
2University of Thessaly, Department of Economics, Volos, 38333, Greece
a)Corresponding author: giannishliasplikas2@gmail.com.
Abstract: Social networks are now a crucial part of today’s way of life. Academic
conferences is another chapter, that give people the opportunity to explore new ideas and
share them with the scientific world. Blending those two factors together in order to achieve
a main purpose, could give a remarkable effect. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the
promotion process of academic conferences through social media and use simulation
models to modelize that analysis. The reason the paper was created, is to provide this
optimal solution to all those seeking how to promote academic conferences effectively
through social media. Thorough research through the paper revealed that social media,
nowadays used by millions and millions of users can be successfully used to promote
academic papers and with great appeal.
Keywords: Simulation modeling, Social media, Promoting, Academic conferences.
1. Introduction
Social media fever has been widening in every aspect of today’s way of life,
bringing together social, economic even academic factors [1]. There are many kinds
of social media, each one with its own unique style. But every-one has one primary
goal. That is, to connect people together. Manipulating that goal for one single
purpose could give remarkable results because of the huge amount of people
connecting together [2]. On the other hand there is another prestigious factor, the
academic world. Someone would ask, how academic community shows its prestige
or even how a scientist interrelates with one another. Academic world poses that
prestige with the power of academic conferences, a factor that claimed and won a
great number of academic scientists, giving them the opportunity to pose their own
ideas in the scientific world and widen their knowledge [3].
Simulations are used with mathematical precision to modelize and conduct a real
experiment. Why to use a simulation instead of a real experiment? Because no real
resources are needed to conduct the experiment and gives real related results. A

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well-known tool used for that purpose is Anylogic 7.2.0 University, which provides
all the necessary tools to simulate a real model [4].
There although is a big problem, a brake if you will in the likes of the scientific
world. Every scientist/researcher who seeks to find the admirable academic
conference, the one that suits him, needs to search thoroughly through the web to
spot the right conference. That search usually doesn’t give the desirable effect. It is
even more difficult for newborn researchers that usually don’t know where to look.
What if there was a way, a shortcut that allowed every researcher to know the exact
details of the desirable academic conference he needed, easily. That question this
paper comes to answer.
There has been many previous studies in social media. More precisely, 3488 the
past year and 14897 the past five years. That numbers indicate that social media is
a pole of study and appeal in the scientific world. As regarding the academic
conferences, there has been referred in 540 the past year and 2916 the past 5 years.
Researches that have both academic conferences and social media as factors are
just 12, the past year and 59 in the past five years. The part of this study that
makes the difference of all the others is the fact that no other study has been
conducted to modelize the promotion process of academic conferences through
social media and that is what makes this paper unique [5].
The objectives of this study are of vital importance. It uses the social media, now
part of everyday life, to promote academic conferences and modelize that process to
find the optimal solution.
2. Four main factors comprise the promotion process of academic
conferences through social media.
2.1. Blog
Is often called a web log. A page, which can be used as both a personal diary and
a social relation tool, pushing a message directly to the public. The user can post
entries in reverse chronological order, with the most recent entry appearing first.
Today’s modern technology, made blogging to evolve. Interactive features were
added, so that videos, images, text, links, even sound clips can be used as a part of
the blog. This interactivity allowed the development of multi-author blogs where
someone can comment and add content in someone else's blog. We could say the
magic of the blog is that it is free for anyone to create, anytime. Nowadays over 156
million users have a public blog and that makes us think, why not to use it for a
better purpose. The answer to this is that, that powerful social tool it is already used
for the likes of many purposes. There are blogs for politics, for business, for
advertising and more. And here is where the blog factor comes to the paper.
Blogging can be used as a means of promoting academic conferences with great
public affiliation. With blogging a company could post the basic details about an
academic conference, news and updates, dates, times, contact details, interviews
with your guest speakers and reminders to register. In the previous paragraphs
links were mentioned. In a blog a link to the academic conference registration page
could be attached. More links that a company could use are links to register for
email updates and links to other social media profiles, maximizing the blogs
potential [7].
In order for a blog to be created for a company, a programmer is needed. A
marketing consultant could be hired in order to provide good advise for supportive
media, like videos and images in the blog and in the advertisement field. The blog
must have the required support in order to present the basic details needed about
the academic conference, details as dates and times, registration pages and other
details as explained in the previous paragraph. In the best case, the total fans will
be maximized and the company will increase its money amount. Moreover, sponsors

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could have a supportive way in the blog. Of course, all that requires the appropriate
company resources.
2.2. Event directories
Event directories are something very familiar to all of us. They are typically links
that leads to other pages where details about an event are attached. An example of
event directory could be the famous social media environment Facebook, where a
typical user often is notified about new and upcoming events to attend to.
Extending this idea, why not use academic conference directories for the likes of
academic conferences. Though academic conference directories, people could find
local academic conferences to attend, connect with others and provide a good
overview of all the basic details required for attendees. Other event directories have
academic conference categories where someone could list his academic conference in
[8].
Like blogging, event directories that belong rightfully to a company, require a
specific amount of company resources. Surely, here too the programmer and the
marketing consultant play their own parts in order to manage, position and promote
well those academic conference directories. Those directories, as mentioned before
lead to other pages, to specific categories regarding the conference. For example an
event directory could lead to the registration page, another directory to a page
regarding sponsors. Those event directories for the academic conferences affect and
appeal a number of people.
2.3. Building a community
Nowadays is hard finding someone not having a social account. Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn and more, are used every hour, every minute, every second of the day.
Those social accounts allow their users to create private chatting groups, little
communities if you like, where they discuss and share content.
Those communities can be at great use in order to promote academic conferences.
With building a community of customers and fans, they can be engaged in
discussions and share great content. To take it further, in order to have more people
in community groups, the company could comment on blogs, on forums, taking part
in Facebook or LinkedIn groups. Making an email newsletter with photos, news and
updates about the academic conference and reminders to register could come very
handy. Every newsletter subscriber, can become part of the company’s community,
provided there is a good content. Think about it as a chain with every part of the
chain, affecting the other. If for example the fans of email newsletter are satisfied,
more will be subscribed and the wider the community will be [9].
What differs that tactic from the previous two, is the reason that fans are
categorized as community, we have the subscribers of the email newsletter that
bring a number of fans to be added in the current fan group, reminders to register
and the social networks where the company pulls the new group of people searching
for a academic conference. Company resources are required to build a new
community.
2.4. Promoting sharing and engagement
Using sharing in social networks, something in a blink of an eye becomes familiar
to a wide range of people. Actually that kind of sharing is a clever marketing
technique. Moreover, most social networks offer some badges or buttons that can be
added in the likes of the user.
A company could use those two techniques to promote academic conferences.
When sharing information about an academic conference, they could encourage the

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audience to share these with friends in order to increase the number of the
audience. Even the buttons mentioned previously could come in handy. Those could
be added in the company’s website or blog, showing if the company is active online
at the moment and help potential attendees where to find you.
Here, the company has the most important role. That is, sharing as much as
possible and devote some of the company’s time in answering in the audiences
questions through the badges mentioned before. The company in order not to lose
important time could hire a person to do that. For sustaining and upgrading the
social networks with those badges and for hiring, company resources must be
devoted for that purpose. The part of people that brings the profits, are actually the
friends of friends of friends, because what happens is actually a chain reaction of
sharing a single post [10].
3. Implementation of the dynamic simulation model
To create the models, the modeling software tool Anylogic 7.2.0 University, was
used to create stock and flow diagrams to model and simulate processes. It presents
you the results of inputs defined by the user and connects the interrelationships
between procedures and functions. Outputs can be displayed in the form of graphs
and tables. Dynamic simulation model techniques were used to create this model
[11].
4. Dynamic simulation model system analysis
This section describes the individual parameters of the dynamic simulation model.
Firstly, the purpose of each element used, will be analyzed. Stocks, flows, converters
and connectors consist the stock and flow model.
A stock represents the concentration of a quantity, either physical or non-
physical.
A flow fills or depletes a stock. The arrow points the direction of positive flow into
or out a stock.
There are two types of Connectors. The first is the solid wire, an action link and
the second a dashed wire, an information link.
A converter keeps values stable or serve as an external input to the model or
convert inflows into outflows through user-defined algebraic or graphical functions
[12].

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Figure 1. Dynamic Simulation Model.
5. Identification and explanation of the dynamic simulation model
The variables identified by the theoretical research are put into practice, by using
the Dynamic Simulation Model, to test their success in real environmental
conditions [13]. The tank “Company Resources” supplies with resources the four
subsystem counterparts consisting of Academic Conference Blog Page, Categories,
Sharing and Engagement and the Community subsystem. These resources are
available in order to execute the related activities and to satisfy leverage.
The trail of thought followed, in order to create the model is called storytelling.
Storytelling is the main characteristic of Anylogic 7.2.0 University simulation model.
Every stock of the simulation model successes its previous one like unfolding a story
with every stock being its next succeeding chapter. The direction of action in that
storytelling is indicated by the direction of the flows [14].

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5.1 Academic conference blog page subsystem
The stock “Company_Resources” provide a percentage of resources in that
subsystem. In order to achieve that purpose, firstly that resources are provided to
the needed Company_staff, more precisely the company needs a programmer and a
marketing consultant and for that purpose a flow from the “Company_ Resources”
stock to the “Number_of_staff” stock is created. And that’s where the storytelling
begins. From the “Number_of_staff” stock two other flows are emerging to connect to
the “Marketing_consultants” one and the “Number_of _programmers”. The marketing
consultant’s role is to give advises to programmer for creating the pages, so an
appropriate flow is created. The programmer is the one to create the event
directories and the pages. A flow emerges from the “Number_of_programmers” stock
to “Event_directories” and “Pages”. After he creates the page or the pages he will
create the blog and then he will add all the details about the academic conference. A
flow from “Pages” to “Blog” and from “Blog” to “Academic Conferences” is created.
The programmer will then add more specific details about the academic conferences.
That is, contact details and the registration page. So two flows are created from the
“Academic_conferences” to those two. Furthermore, the programmer will add the
appropriate media stuff in that blog page among others. Another flow connects the
“Number_of_ programmers” with the “Media_stuff”. MS2ACBP, CD2ACBP and
RP2ACBP eventually lead to “Academic_conference_blog_page”, which includes all
those precious elements. Sponsors will add their resources in that page. So the flow
S2ACBP connects to “Academic_conference_blog_page”. Eventually the last lead to
the “Satisfaction_academic_conference_blog_page”, an indication of the satisfaction
percentage this activity offers.
5.2. Sharing and engagement subsystem
A number of company resources need to be given for the sharing and engagement
activity. The flow CR2SAE represents that purpose. According to the theory
analyzed, badges and buttons are used to show the online activity and post or
answer questions. From the “Badges_and_Buttons” stock a flow emerges to connect
with the “Active_online” one and from that other two flows lead to the
“Posted_questions” and “Posted_answers” stocks. A second flow, the SAI2PS
connects “Sharing_and_engagement” with “Promote_sharing”. That sharing is
promoted by interacting with friends and that is the purpose of PS2IWF. The
PQ2SSAE, IWF2SSAE and PA2SSAE, all lead to “Satisfaction_sharing_and
_engagement”, an indication of the satisfaction of that activity.
5.3. Community subsystem
In that subsystem, a percent of company resources are given in order to create a
community. New social networks are created and added in the academic conference
blog page. Those are indicated by the C2SN, IWF2AO and SN2ACBP flows. Moreover,
commenting is a very successful way of furthering a community, more specifically
commenting on blogs serves that. C2C and C2BC are the flows representing that
purpose. In the theory analyzed before, email newsletter is a part of the community
activity, so a flow from the “Community” stock to the “Email _newsletter” one is
created. For a stunning newsletter, photos can be added, news and updates, as
pointed in the theoretical analyses. The flows EN2P, EN2N and EN2U, are the ones
managing that conjunction. Lastly regarding that subsystem, P2S flow, N2S, U2S
and BC2S, lead to “Satisfaction_community”, indication of that activity’s
satisfaction.

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5.4. Event directories subsystem
The fourth and last subsystem needs its share from the company resources in order
to be implemented. A flow from the “Company_Resources” tank to
“Event_directories” is firstly created. Event directories are of many categories. ED2C
flow points that connection. There are four event directory categories. The sponsors
page, the conference details, the contact about the academic conferences and the
local academic conferences. Four the categories, four the flows emerging from the
“Categories” stock to those our stocks. That four are C2SP, C2CD, C2CATAC and
C2LAC accordingly. That subsystem has a satisfaction leverage as the previous
ones. To achieve that, SP2S, CD2S, CATAC2S and IAC2S flows that connection to
the “Satisfaction_event_directories” stock.
Figure 2. Satisfaction Academic Conference Blog Page in conjunction with Satisfaction Community,
Number of Event Directories, Sharing and Engagement and Profit.
What we observe from the graph in Fig.2, is that the satisfaction percentage
as regarding all the four factors, is rising significantly during the first months and
then those satisfactions gain stability. We can easily observe that the company
resources in the beginning, given in the four leading factors, lead eventually to
company resources replenishment in a steady rate and in the same time the four
factors are getting a high rise at the beginning but eventually tending to stabilize
their resources. In a simple translation, social media as regarding the promotion of
academic conferences give successful and very satisfied results.

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Figure 3. Bar-Chart: Company Resources in conjunction with Academic Conferences, Event
directories, Sharing and Engagement and Community.
From Fig.3 and the bar-chart, we can observe that the Academic conference
blog page bar is higher than the other bars. That means, that the Academic
conference blog page factor gives the maximun Profit. The event directories
factor/subsystem, gives the least Profit back to the company. In other words, the
factor event directories gives minus back-up in the company. That with its turn
means that bigger attention should be given in that factor.
Figure 4. Pie-Chart: Company Resources in conjunction with Profit.
In Fig.4, we can observe a pie-chart as regarding the Company Resources
and the Profit gained back. As we can see, the ammount of Profit gained back, given
in percentage is 76.7% more that the 23.3% as regarding the initial Company
Resources. In other words, Profit is approximatelly three times higher than the
initial Company Resources lost.

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Figure 5. Stack-Chart: Satisfaction Academic Conference Blog Page in conjunction with Satisfaction
Community, Number of Event Directories and Sharing and Engagement.
Fig.5 indicates that the satisfaction given by the academic conference blog page is
higher than the other three factors. Next, as regarding the satisfaction level, sharing
and engagement subsystem follows. The next satisfaction level belongs to the
community subsystem and lastly, the lower satisfaction level belongs to the event
directories subsystem.
Figure 6. Time-Stack-Chart: Company Resources in conjunction with Profit.
In Fig.6 and the time stack chart, we can observe that the Profit gained is in higher
level than the Company Resources lost. In the beginning it starts with a high rise for
both and then they both gain stability, with Profit much higher that the Company
Resources lost.
Figure 7. Profit statistics in conjunction with Company_Resources_statistics.

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Anylogic 7.2.0 University, allows us to give statistic measures of the factors used.
Statistic measures become more accurate as the sample number gets highter. Here
the sample number equals the seconds passed. As we can see in Fig.7, as the
number of samples/seconds, gets higher the percentage of Profit gained tends to
become equal as three times the initial Company Resources.
Figure 8. Time-Color_Chart: Profit
In simple words, the last figure, Fig.8, implies that the Academic conference blog
page factor gives the bigger ammount of Profit and the bigger satisfaction level in the
company.
6 Support for decision makers
The “COMPANY RESOURCES” section allows the decision maker to
determine the amount of company resources available in the four other sections.
The “SHARING AND ENGAGEMENT” section allows the user to define the
satisfaction level, sharing and engagement offers. The “EVENT DIRECTORIES”
section provides the user to control the flow regarding those directories. The
“ACADEMIC CONFRENCE BLOG PAGE” allows the user to sustain academic
conference blog page in a desirable prestige and “COMMUNITY” section allows the
user to control community’s range. To begin the simulation, the user chooses all the
values of the inputs that are desired, and then clicks the run button. The simulation
runs for a period defined by the user and pauses to allow the user to review the
effects of the decisions made. Support is provided by the prototype to guide the
decision maker through the decision making process [4]. The percentages have been
chosen and tested wisely to provide the optimal results and that is indicated by the
green lamps. Lowering or rising a percentage leads to a dissatisfaction level and
therefore making a lamp yellow or red.

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Figure 9. Main User Interface
7 Conclusion
The purpose of this research is to record the social media key factors that play a
significant role in the promotion process of academic conferences [15]. The
development of dynamic simulation models aims to provide an optimal solution for
that social media role, in order to bring about the best results of it. In this research,
in-depth exploration of key factors is being conducted for the promotion of academic
conferences, as well as a complete record of the variables that are directly related to
the main variables. Through the theoretical analysis and the comparison of various
operations of the model we were able to test with great success, the leading factors
[14]. The ultimate aim is the successful promotion of scientific conferences through
social media. Our study is a comprehensive attempt to record and develop the
scientific variables of academic conferences in social media, which leads to the
creation of a strategic model for the successful promotion of those conferences.
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