Tuvel Communications Blog: August 2009 Archives

August 17, 2009

Elan: Sept. 13 Save-A-Limb-Bike-Ride

The following comes from Elan...

On September 13th, I'm riding in the Save-A-Limb-Bike-Ride. I am hoping that you can help me reach my fundraising goal of $1,000.00!

The Save-A-Limb-Bike-Ride is 6 miles long. The reason I'm doing this bike ride is because it's for the Rubin Institute, and that's the place where I had my 2 surgeries, and that's the place that's getting me better!

I'll be doing the bike ride, along with my mom & dad, to raise money for the Save-A-Limb Fund which is a part of the Rubin Institute in Baltimore, Md.
The money raised from our bike ride will be used for people with no health insurance that need surgery. The institute, part of Sinai Hospital, does limb lengthening and hip surgeries. I had my operations done there because they have the most advanced technology for my hip condition. Now, I want to do something so that another kid can have the same chance as me.

We've been riding over the summer to get ready for our bike ride and now I need your help! To sponsor me for my September 13th bike ride and to Support the Save a Limb Fund, please visit my webpage and donate. It's that simple!
All donations are tax deductible too.

This has been a very rough experience, and we want to do everything we can to give back to the Rubin Institute, so please, please help us. If you have any questions, please let me know. Thanks so much if you can help me! I'll post pictures of the bike ride to my website and let you all know when they're up.

Love, Elan

Technorati Tags: perthes elan+arnowitz Save+A+Limb+Bike+Ride

Posted by Mitch at 03:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 02, 2009

What we learned from our Twitter foodie chat

We recently organized a Twitter foodie chat for client Share Our Strength. The goals of our chat were to raise money, create awareness and build community. You can find out what a Twitter chat is here.

I wanted to get lessons learned down on digital paper before we forget! Our chat was held on July 30 with a moderator and panel of 5. See the details here.

Before continuing though, I must thank some very smart Internet folks whom we learned a great deal from. Jeff Hurt is an assn. guy and involved with Twitter chats #eventprofs and #assnchat. Sarah Evans runs her own PR shop and the #journchat twitter chat. Robert Swanwick runs #SpkrChat and all of it's parts. And, of course there's Carissa Rogers who runs the wildly popular #gno/Girls Night Out chat. You can check out a more complete listing of Twitter chats and their corresponding schedules here.

From these folks and others, we learned about moderating chats, setting up chat rooms, chat wikis and topic polls. We also learned more by reading this and this. We actually created and even distributed our own #sosfood chat guide.

One of the biggest lessons we learned was that an online chat takes as much preparation as a traditional event! Here are some of the other things that we learned from our first Twitter chat:

Lessons learned:

Have a mission or message that resonates. Share Our Strength is a great client with an easy to understand message. Clarity and brevity help when staring down the barrel at 140 characters :-)

Get a great moderator. Kate Miller, of Cooking During Stolen moments moderated our chat. Kate is a respected community builder and experienced foodie. She also has lots of friends- key to attracting a valuable panel, securing giveaways and getting the word out. Probably most important, Kate has the right temperament to run a chat.

Moderating a chat is really not about moderation! A good moderator is a better facilitator! Kate was able to ask questions and then get out of the way. This is easier said then done when tweets are zipping by at the speed of sound. She was able to keep the conversation rolling along without stifling it.

Along with a moderator, it helps to have a great panel. Panelists add value, draw attention and help to create excitement. Many established chats have a moderator but no panel or maybe one guest. We felt it was important to reach for the stars in our first chat and ended up with a panel of 5 foodies. The fun thing about a chat though is that all the participants can be panelists while sharing experiences and knowledge.

Try to establish a personality. Chats, like other online conversations have personalities! Think about what you want yours to be before show time. Granted, your chat's personality will, in part, depend on the topic and tweeps but... you can also help to shape it. We liked the feel of #gno's chat. Our moderator took a warm & fuzzy approach for our night time chat and foodies responded.

Get the word out. To spread the word, we searched through Twitter directories such as wefollow, Twellow and TwitterPacks. We then compiled a list of foodies, developed a message, contacted folks and asked them to come to our party.

Since the Twitter chat was the 2nd half of a campaign, we were fortunate to have lots of bloggers to reach out to that supported our cause. We also contacted the clients Twitter followers that we thought might be interested.

For every person we contacted, we asked for a retweet/RT. Most important, we asked partners & panelists to tweet it up! We started the marketing outreach effort one week prior to the chat. We felt pretty good when we saw traction from initial tweets.

Have a place that offers an explanation and a way to get involved. There are lots of peeps that aren't familiar with chats. Twitter chat archives can also be posted to the website. what the hashtag offers a free chat archiving service along with metrics. We were also able to use webpage our page for fundraising.

Use giveaways and prizes to create excitement. We worked hard to secure great giveaways and raffle prizes. Again, we tried to tailor everything we did to the chat's topic and this also pertained to prizes. People still love something for nothing!

Work out the logistics ahead of time! We figured out fulfillment for giveaways and raffle prizes in advance. We also had a schedule along with cued up questions. We created tweets ahead of time. We also tried to work out smaller details before the chat started so that we could focus on the conversation. We also had a team in place while the chat was going on. This allowed our moderator to focus on the conversation while we took care of business.

The conversation moved at a quick pace- some said, it went by to fast. We raised almost $1,000 in 2 hours and had 175 people involved in our chat. We made new friends and followers, discovered new niches, learned by watching and listening and had a great time!

So, when are you doing your next chat?

Technorati Tags: mitch+arnowitz twitter social+media twitter+chats