Twitter for event organisers

Twitter is now a mainstay for events – it is far too easy to find yourself tweeting away and tuning in to the hashtag and getting involved in conversations across the room with people you have never met. In fact it is often useful to monitor tweets for events that I am not even at.

When organising events, one of the requirements today has to bedisplaying those very tweets. Not only do they present live feedback of the event; it also acts as a great prompt for more tweeting and offline conversations. In fact at recent Lyris, I had that exact requirement. I wasn’t really happy with using one of the many Twitter clients out there like Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop – they are great outbound tools but not ideal for displaying tweets on a large LCD screen and grabbing attention.

There are several tools out there made specifically for events. They all display the tweets in a way that encourages attention, whilst some also allow moderation – either automatically or with manual intervention.

The tools I looked at recently were:

Visible Tweets
This is as simple a tool as you can get. Go to the website; type in a hashtag and have all tweets – updated in realtime – presented to you in a visually attractive way. Given the simplicity and audience this was the tool I went with. For those who want some added complexity – it also supports Twitter’s search operators so you can refine further by date; sender etc. You can also choose from 3 different animations; though for an event I tend to veer towards the “Rotation” style.

Twitterfall
Not quite as sexy as Visible Tweets; there are plenty more options with this tool. Again you can use a hashtag and/or use Twitter search operators; but in addition you can exclude keywords; change the speed of the animation; exclude retweets and even restrict by location (though I assume that would require everyone tweeting to share their location).

Twubs
Twubs has a fully fledged conference tool – having live moderation as well as a conference display view similar in style to Twitterfall though a cleaner design. It also has the ability to manage question and answer sessions for panels/moderators. Currently it is manual to set up (you have to fill out a request form) and it is currently free whilst in beta.

Wiffiti

I first saw Wiffiti (or something similar!) at a Forrester event recently in London. It definitely grabs attention with the movement of tweets and the automatic display of suitably tagged images from Flickr. It is really easy to setup and there is automatic moderation available so you can choose to show only G or R rated content. Compared to the other platforms; Wiffiti has a lot of functionality – allowing users to send messages direct to the screen using SMS as well as Twitter/Flickr. There is also some reporting available showing total interactions, number of unique users and location based information though I have not seen the actual reporting interface.

In the end I went with visibletweets.com and got plenty of positive feedback from the audience. It was quick and simple though it would be nice to get some level of reporting after. I do like Wiffiti as well though other than the visuals and the reporting I dont really need the additional functionality today – at the time, setup felt more complex but looking at it now it seems much simpler. As a result I might use that next time.

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Last month I was invited to participate in a VideoEgg Think Tank about Social Media marketing strategies around the World Cup. It turned out to be a really surprising and thought provoking discussion.

Far too often social media conversations centre on the hype around how it is set to conquer the world of marketing and how it is going to signal the death knell of every other channel. It was nice to have a conversation around how it plays in the wider mix.

So news flash – social media is important but other channels still have their purpose. It all depends on the requirements. Social Media will become/already is a key channel in marketing – just thinking about the basics:

1. Social Media is very much about digital conversations. Bringing those offline conversations that were already happening into the digital world. Lack of conversation about a brand can mean indifference in your target markets. As the old saying goes..  the only thing worse than negative press is no press.

2. Not participating in conversations (in an engaging and relevant way etc) can mean you are only reactive in the social media space – that usually means dealing with something negative.

So what that means is whilst hopefully you already have a core conversation you can have with your loyal followers; you almost certainly want to have something more to talk about. There is nothing like a World Cup year to help with that right? Well sure – but before continuing it is worth pointing out that you really should only be using it directly if there is a fit with your brand. Maybe I am jaded but World Cup sponsorships on their own strike me as a waste of money. It would be better if the sponsoring brands built up more of a story around why they are involved with the World Cup as opposed to just a sponsor. I am not sure I could tell you the various sponsors after the World Cup with the possible exception of Nike. Oh no hang on. They are not actually a sponsor. It is Adidas!  If there is any recent research around sponsorships of big events I would be interested in seeing them.

Anyhow, getting back on track, the World Cup generates conversations and plenty of them. One thing we all agreed on in the discussion – interrupting World Cup conversations is not a good idea. The trick is to identify something that will generate conversations on their own. One great example was the live TV ads that are planned on ITV during the World Cup – I am sure those will generate conversations. One advert that has already generated conversations – albeit for the wrong reasons – was the Nike ad which ITV cut short.

That was one of the key takeaways from the morning – using other channels to help facilitate or create conversations is an excellent way to generate coverage for your brand and hopefully in the process create more brand advocates in the process.

Just to be clear – I don’t mean using things like football hoardings saying “follow <insert brand here> on Twitter”. I mean seriously..

Get your creative hats on.. and thanks again to the guys at VideoEgg.

Related articles:

• ITV investigates Nike ad gaffe (guardian.co.uk)
• Nike’s Awesome World Cup Ad Shows Dwindling Power of “Official” Sports Sponsorships (bnet.com)

Mark Ritson has chosen to court controversy in his latest column around why social media should not be an automatic choice for marketers. He set his stall out immediately when he said he winced when every brand manager concluded with a major part of the spend going on social media.

Mark, it is safe to say, has his reservations when it comes to social media So is this a post by someone showing he is past his use by date?

Plenty of people in the comments and on twitter believe so though Mark is merely making the counter argument to the hype around social media. The same happened previously with virals, “useless” banner ads and second life. None of which makes either camp correct, though in the comments he admits there is a middle ground that is the better approach:

“Perhaps most marketers are already aware that social media is being over-promoted and that ultimately it has to be integrated into the existing mix where there are certainly many synergies between traditional and social media.”

The trick like all forms of marketing is to understand what the channel provides – Mark chose to give some excellent examples of companies who have not got it wrong  (Eurostar, Southwest Airlines) – I could add a few more to that list (Nestle, Habitat..) and others that he believes should not be using social media (Rentokil, Hellman’s mayonaise).

The difficulty is in getting the approach right – social media is not an easy channel to succeed in and worse it is difficult to measure today. Like all new marketing techniques online; it takes time for the tools to catch up.

Social Media is a platform that allows for dialogue and a way to encourage user to user conversations. This is something the best examples of companies using social media have figured out. I think the point Mark should be making is that if you haven’t figured out how to both have and also generate conversations online then you shouldn’t be creating those facebook pages and twitter accounts in the first place. Think it through first and understand why you should be there. What is the benefit to the user?

There are plenty of companies who you would either  expect to stay away from social media or who you might think do not need to even be there but take a look:

1. Domino’s Pizza UK has approx 30k people on their Facebook page and regularly getting feedback from their customers – how much would this information have cost in the past? Mark talks about how small the numbers are in social media but in reality these are either your most loyal brand advocates (and who will help with those user conversations) or transient dissatisfied customers who you should be listening to anyway. Both are a valuable commodity to a marketer.
2. Shipserve are leaders in the online marine supplies & online marine chandlery business. Why on earth would people want to be involved in a LinkedIn group around this particular niche. They are.
3. Starbucks has been a bit of a poster child of social media advocates. The Next Web really tells the story well enough. Read it here. I still cannot figure out why someone would want to be a fan of a coffee shop but then I am not a coffee nut
4. Finally a good example of adapting Social Media to work for a bank is First Direct’s Live campaign. See it in action here. It is an almost real-time view of what people are saying about First Direct on the web. At the time of writing 77% of people are saying positive things – I am not sure any of the other banks would be so willing to try this campaign!

You need to have good service capabilities to succeed in social media.

What this all boils down to is if you’re just starting out or thinking you need a social media programme, plan and/or experiment in smaller niche areas (if possible). Social Media is not good for campaigns only. Be prepared for the fall out if you don’t have a plan in place for the negative comments you are going to receive and be prepared for an even worse outcome in social media.. silence.

Social media should not be taking up a major part of a everyone’s marketing plan by default today but that doesn’t mean it is not an important part of the mix. Of course for some companies it could well be the entirety of their marketing budget – it all depends on a company’s specific needs. The important thing to figure out is where your company sits in that spectrum.

Wherever you sit today, I would expect budgets to grow year on year for pretty much all companies as consumers and businesses identify the best companies for their needs more quickly through the use of social media tools.

To be silent in social media is a death knell for companies.

image source: elycefeliz

On Monday the Guardian wrote up a story about Murdoch blocking Google from listing stories from his newspapers. This in addition to him changing his newspaper websites from being freely accessible to sitting behind a paywall made plenty of people think Murdoch was crazy.

It is true this could turn out to be a gift to his competitors as this blog mentions. Indeed the Telegraph on whose site that blog is hosted must be rubbing their hands in glee.

Maybe.

For me, I believe this is an opportune moment for newspaper publishers and one that may not come again for a while. Rupert Murdoch is taking advantage.

Rupert Murdoch is right to say that when Google first started indexing the web; publishers were not aware of what they were signing up to. In fact I think we can safely say they were completely blind to the consequences of what they were agreeing to. Countering this of course is the  fact that Google delivers 100,000 clicks every minute via Google News and its search engine. Removing itself from Google search is surely a surefire way to deliver more clicks to News International’s competitors right?

Definitely.

But it is an extremely short term view which will not help news publishers in the long term and that is where the opportunity that is available today comes from.

The key company mentioned in the comments made by Murdoch were that he would remove his websites from Google (my emphasis). In recent months, Microsoft launched Bing and gained enough traction that people are starting to believe Bing might go somewhere. It has of course a long way to go but one of the things Microsoft is doing is using its financial power to help it win the battle. Not just through its significant investment in R&D but also through partnerships. Witness Bing’s first mover deal with Twitter (which was quickly responded to by Google).

I believe either through a bright idea internally at News International or through a direct Microsoft approach that News International will strike commercial terms with Microsoft Bing and deliver its content through its news aggregation channel and through its search engine.

That will reset the relationship between search engines and news publishers and possibly lead to the newspapers being freely available on the web. I wonder how long it will be before Google agrees commercial terms with News International?

My bet is it will be quick enough that News International articles will never be removed from Google..

[update] The Financial Times is reporting that Micrsoft are in talks with News International to index their news stories in Bing.

I love finding new opportunities to see new information even if around 50% of marketers are supposed to feel overloaded with data (Forrester) – if you think about how much data is out there, it is not difficult to understand the issue. The difference is that everyday there are new and simpler ways to act on that data and do something useful. The trick is to approach it in small bites and understand what you want to achieve.

Anyhow, before I get sidetracked on data – this is more informational and interesting than a tool to deal with data better. Inside twitter there is a way to favourite tweets. It is not the greatest feature ever as it is not searchable so you only ever browse through the most recent items. I have ended up using it more as a save for later feature than a favourite/like feature.

Favstar.fm allows you to see who is favouriting your tweets as well as showing a leaderboard for the most favourited/most recent tweets. v cool

As I said, more interesting than anything else – it did allow me to find some new people on Twitter though – assuming that is a good thing

[image credit: kevin dooley]