Tuvel Communications Blog

7 Ways to Build Community (and Interest) with Twitter Chats

2011-05-04T15:16:00Z

Online chats have really evolved since the days when AOL was king. In this day and age of social media where our online conversations have been condensed down to bite-sized nuggets of 140 characters or less, chatting has moved from the IM chatrooms to Twitter. A natural progression, since Twitter is already being used by millions of people to converse with each other daily.

]]> Enter Twitter Chats. While not a new concept (Twitter chats have been around for at least a few years), they're still fantastic for connecting with people in much the same way the original chatrooms allowed.

There are Twitter chats that happen daily for a variety of topics (check out this comprehensive list of Twitter chats to find one that interests you), and it's incredibly easy to join the conversation. Simply follow the assigned hashtag for the chat you want to participate in and include that hashtag in your chat-related tweets. Tweetchat is the foremost tool available for Twitter chats, allowing you to easily follow a specific hashtag in a dedicated “room” and automatically include that hashtag in your tweets (so you don't have to type it yourself). Twitter chats usually take place at a certain scheduled time on a regular basis (check with the moderator of a particular chat for its schedule) and last for about 30 minutes to an hour.

It's equally easy to create and moderate your own Twitter chat, and it can be used as a powerful community-building, networking and marketing tool for businesses, events, associations and nonprofits. Here are 7 ways Twitter chats can be used to help you connect with your customers, prospects, base, members and others in your industry:

Pre-event mingling: If you're a conference or event organizer, a Twitter chat can be a great way for attendees to mingle with each other before the event and get advice from both you and each other. An example of this is #nabchat, which is a Twitter chat we organized before the NAB Show (our client) for veteran and newbie attendees alike to connect with each other.

Feedback: Let's say you're beta-testing a new product or service before it launches. Why not hold a Twitter chat with your beta testers to get their feedback? This also allows you to connect on a more personal level with those who may be your customers in the near future.

Crowdsourcing: Along the same lines as using a Twitter chat for customer feedback, it can also be used to crowdsource ideas – i.e. event sessions, fundraising ideas, or even product ideas.

Thought-leadership: If you're leading weekly Twitter chats about important topics within your industry or niche, you'll quickly establish yourself and your organization as a thought-leader. You might even consider engaging and partnering with an expert in your industry to share in leading your chats periodically. Engage 365, an online community for event professionals, does an excellent job of this with their weekly #engage365 Twitter chats, enlisting the help of industry experts to moderate on different chat topics.

Interviewing an industry expert or leader: Twitter chats can also be used to conduct “Twitterviews” with other industry thought leaders (for instance, speakers at an upcoming conference). These are usually much more tightly moderated, with discussions and Q&As happening during a specific time period.

Rallying your base and fundraising: Nonprofits and political campaigns can use Twitter chats to generate excitement and discussion around a specific cause or platform and encourage people to donate or get involved. An example of this is #SOSFood, which was a series of Twitter chats for food bloggers to help raise money for our client, Share Our Strength. The chats themselves were about food-blogging topics, but participants were encouraged to donate to Share Our Strength during the chats.

Getting to know you: At the heart of all Twitter chats is simply getting acquainted and networking with your fellow Tweeps over a topic in which you share an interest!

How have you used Twitter chats or seen them used successfully as a marketing or community-building tool? Leave a comment and tell us about it?

10 Tips for Successful Social Media Contests & Promotions

2011-04-20T13:32:00Z

Contests and promotions through social media outposts like Twitter and Facebook are a great way to generate excitement and engage and involve your fans, friends and followers. It's a key way to get people interacting with your brand, product, event or organization in a meaningful way while helping you to identify your most enthusiastic advocates.

Through our work with a variety of clients at Tuvel Communications, we've created and executed several successful social media contests & promotions. You can see some examples of our work, here, here and here.

Along the way, we've been able to refine our efforts to maximize results while creating excitement and having fun! By sharing some of our tips, we hope that we can save you time while driving the results that you want. With this in mind, we've created our Top 10 list of ways to ensure that your social media contests & promotions are successful:

]]> Get peeps engaged! Don't just broadcast promotions through social networking outlets. Rather, get folks involved with your brand or organization. We recently ran a Twitter promotion that asked folks to tell us, in 140 characters or less, why they should get a free conference pass. We also ran a promotion that required those interested to provide the contest answer as a comment on the client blog. Create something that allows people to interact directly with your brand - it's key to getting traction and conversation going in your social media communities.

Have a there-there. Don't just do a contest for the sake of doing a contest! All of our promotions have a specific purpose. While you want to create buzz and excitement, you also also want to think about the other goals you want to accomplish. Do you want to increase attendance, fund-raise, generate discussion, build an email list or deliver another metric?

Make it simple to participate. Complex games are fun (anyone remember the early days of scavenger hunts that included several websites?) but may attract less participants. It's great to utilize the "flavor of the month" technologies out there, but keep your audience in mind and don't make them do anything that will generate more perplexed questions than actual participation.

Create fun and excitement! People love contests and the chance to win prizes. Make 'em interesting and people will play. Convey excitement through messaging. Make your promotion different and, of course, inject personality into it.

Follow best practices. We are careful not to get our clients or bloggers and others into trouble by promoting or creating a contest. Know the rules beforehand. In this game, you can't beg forgiveness! You can find out more about the rules and regulations here and here.

Offer value and relevance. Find out what turns people on. We have executed many government related promotions. We've been told that government types aren't interested in promotions. Not true! Most people are interested in a contest or giveaway, it's just a matter of finding out what they like.

Leverage marketing partners. We typically approach client partners that have large followings (fans, friends, followers, subscribers). We then approach these folks so that they might create a special (client) promotion for their readers. Everyone wins in this scenario with partners being able to offer value and our client reaping the rewards!

It's the total campaign that matters. Promotions are most successful when they are part of a larger, integrated campaign. Involve creative and promote on the website and through email. Our most successful campaigns are seamless and can be played through several social networking platforms.

Make it easy to pick a winner and fulfill. We typically create giveaways so that our clients can randomly choose winners. We also find prizes that can be fulfilled through an email address - gift cards are a good example - make awarding easy. Have you ever had to hunt down snail mail addresses for fulfillment? Logistically, it can be a painful process!

Don't stop! Promotions help to create traction and momentum. Continue the conversation, get others involved and grow your supporters. In other words: be a smart marketer!

What We're Reading, April Fool's Edition

2011-04-02T00:34:00Z

With April Fool's Day comes the myriad of jokes from the social mediasphere - some that were pretty good "gotchas" and others that I could tell were #aprilfools fodder a mile away. For today's edition of What We're Reading, I thought I'd share a few of those that tickled our funny bone:

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Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt leaves a not-very-happy voice mail after TechCrunch reporter Michael Arrington wrote a joking post about Google Places that mentioned Rosenblatt's yacht, The Adsense.

Speaking of Google, Gmail introduces a new product called Gmail Motion for writing emails using body motion. Actually, that would be very cool if it were real - dontcha think?

From the Oops...April Fools?" Department: Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes accidentally (or "accidentally-for real"?) sends a "Confidential and Internal" email out to Hootsuite users that was meant for board members and investors. The email, which was about changing business models to something called "Happy Owls", was actually in of itself an April Fool's joke, but it turns out it wasn't meant to be sent out to customers (or...was it?)

Danny Brown posted on his blog that Twitter was banning hashtags because of its "connotation with drug use."

LinkedIn suggested fictional characters and dead famous people as people you may know (like The Hatter and Groucho Marx). Cute.

What were your favorite April Fool's jokes played out online?

Using Quora for Personal and Business Benefit

2011-02-10T16:30:00Z

I joined Quora and have been using it for a couple of months, after seeing all the buzz about it on Twitter in recent months (and since it's my job to know about these things). Now, you might be thinking "ANOTHER social network? How am I going to keep track of this? And what use could this possibly be to me?" I don’t blame you for thinking this, because I thought the same thing at first. It seems like there's a new social networking site every week, with claims from all over the social mediasphere about how it's "the next big thing in social media." It can get a bit tiresome, ya know?

Now that I’ve had the opportunity to evaluate Quora, I want to give you my initial thoughts, as well as provide a few opportunities and uses for Quora for businesses.

]]> What is Quora, anyway?

My first thought when I started using Quora was Oh, this is like a cross between Twitter and LinkedIn Answers with some Wikipedia thrown in. You create a profile, "follow" some topics (and people) in which you're interested, and post your own questions and/or answers to other questions. People can vote your answers up or down, comment on them, thank you for an answer, and even mark it as unhelpful (which essentially buries your answer). You can also follow individual questions within a topic to be alerted of answers that are added. So, there's a lot of following going on.

The Wikipedia-esque part comes in the ability for people to edit your answers. Well, you can "suggest" edits to the original poster that they can choose to accept. This is where I'm slightly confused, though. Why would you suggest edits to someone else's answer? It's their answer – why not leave a comment, or post your own answer? Maybe there's something glaringly incorrect about their answer, and rather than publicly call them out on it, you choose to suggest the correction. To me, though, this seems rather nit-picky. Am I wrong here?

That's great, but how can I use Quora?

I hear ya. You don't want to join yet another social network without knowing what you could possibly get out of it – both personally and business-wise. Let's go through a few of these uses and opportunities:

Building Thought-Leadership: Follow topics in which you have some expertise and answer questions in those topics. Provide well thought-out answers that will help to position you as a go-to expert on that topic. You also have the ability to describe your experience on a particular topic, which people see when you post an answer within that topic.

Content Marketing: The questions and answers you post on Quora can be great fodder for other content – like blog posts, for instance. Use your questions for a specific topic as the basis for a blog post to get your readers thinking about answers. Or, create a blog post from your answer (and the answers of others) to someone else’s question. And hey - you can even connect your Wordpress or Tumblr blog to Quora to make this easier!

By the way, Quora has a cool feature that gives you the ability to tweet a link to your answer to a question. This is great for cross-promotion between platforms, although I wish you could also post to your LinkedIn profile (makes sense, doesn't it?).

Research: Quora covers a wide array of topics, so it's dead easy to find a wealth of information on whatever you might be looking for. If you still can't answer your question from what's already there, post it and crowdsource answers!

Brand & Industry Monitoring: Run a search for an industry topic (like "Mobile Broadband") or a brand (like "Verizon") - the results are a treasure trove of information to help you gauge industry hot topics and customer pain points. It's a great way to listen and participate in the discussions going on - both for thought-leadership and for customer support.

Expanding Your Network: Sure, there are loads of people from my existing networks that I'm following and who are following me on Quora; but I've managed to find lots of new people as well through mutually-followed topics and questions. These are incredibly smart people who I consider to be top of their game and post some really helpful answers to questions.

Are you using Quora? How have you found it useful (or not, even)? Tell us your opinion!

Using LinkedIn for Events: Join the #Engage365 Chat on Friday, 1/28

2011-01-26T17:50:00Z

Back in October, we moderated a chat for Engage 365 on how event professionals could utilize new Twitter features and Facebook groups for event promotion and community-building (you can read the archived chat here). Ever since then, I've wanted to have a similar discussion with social media and online community rock stars in the events industry about LinkedIn. We've seen huge improvements to their platform recently, so why not talk about using those improvements to our benefit?

]]> I'll be moderating an Engage 365 Twitter chat this Friday, January 28th at 1pm EST about using LinkedIn for events, and you can join the chat via TweetChat here.

I'd like to get your ideas and suggestions first so we can discuss them during the chat. How are you currently (or how would you) use LinkedIn for promotion, community-building and/or networking for an event? Share your ideas here!

We're Looking for Social Media Rock Stars!

2011-01-13T17:23:00Z

Photo credit: rizzato

2011 is shaping up to be a busy year here at Tuvel Communications, and we need the help of some social media and digital communications rock stars! Interested in working with us? Here's what we're looking for:

]]> We're looking for freelance Social Media Campaign Associates to work on a variety of projects and campaigns for our clients. You will conduct research to identify influencers, evangelists and thought-leaders (such as bloggers, forum administrators, online group/community leaders, discussion list moderators, and other social networkers), execute outreach campaigns, build relationships with community influencers, support client social media outpost efforts and assist with campaign tracking and reporting.

Requirements:

You have 3-5 years experience in an online marketing and/or communications/PR role, specifically using social media and working on blogger and/or media outreach campaigns (including strategy, implementation and/or management).

You're an Internet research pro and able to locate influencers and contact information using a variety of online research techniques. Our outreach campaigns go beyond just blogs, so knowledge of and the ability to find the right people in a variety of online communities - like web forums, user and professional groups, listservs and email lists, and other social networks - is absolutely essential.

You're an active user social media sites; but most importantly, you know how to use them as a part of an overall marketing/communications strategy and utlize best practices when doing so.

You have knowledge of third-party social media tools and platforms and how they can be used for different projects.

Since this is a telecommuting role requiring remote access, so you should actively use tools like Skype and GTalk for communication with the Tuvel team.

Highly organized, self-starting individual.

Experience working with associations or events desired, but not required.

NOTE: We are hiring freelancers only for this position. This is a part-time, independent contracting role requiring approximately 25 hours per week, and you must have working availability Monday through Friday during regular working hours (9am-6pm).

Please send an e-mail with resume/applicable experience and interest to kari (at) tuvel (dot) com with "Social Media Campaign Associate" in the subject line.

Building the Bridge Between Outreach and Social Media Communities (Infographic)

2011-01-11T21:01:06Z

2011 is shaping up to be an exciting and productive year for Tuvel, and this is something I created as part of some big plans we have in the works.

]]> This bridge infographic demonstrates how outreach and social media marketing/community-building go hand in hand - creating brand evangelists in the process. We believe that the two elements, while effective on their own, are much more effective and successful when working together at the same time to build community and buzz around a brand, product, event or cause.

Tuvel Communications: The Total Social Media Campaign (Infographic)

15 Things We’ve Learned About Social Media Marketing in 2010

2010-12-31T14:40:00Z

Photo Credit: proteinbiochemist

Can you believe another year is almost over and a new one nearly upon us? Time really does go by fast when you're having fun – meeting new people, building new (and valuable) relationships, and learning new things!

We've learned so much in 2010, and we've tried to impart some of our knowledge to you. So, rather than the usual "predictions for 2011" post that seems to proliferate this time of year, here's a quick review of what we here at Tuvel learned in social media marketing in 2010.

]]>

How to use Foursquare for events.

How to avoid pitfalls and prevent failure in social media.

Why measuring social media KPIs makes more sense than measuring social media ROI.

What kind of metrics should be tracked in social media. (from Mike Brown of Brainzooming)

How to use new Facebook and Twitter features for events. (Engage 365 Chat)

Virtual and hybrid events don’t have to cannibalize F2F events.

Why social media marketing agencies can indeed exist.

How to deal with sticky situations in social media.

These 11 lessons when it comes to social media for events.

How to successfully live-tweet at an event. (from NTEN)

How to run a successful Twitter contest.(from Lisa Barone)

Scheduling tweets can be a good thing. (from Jenise Fryatt)

The importance of keeping it real. (from Marijean Jaggers)

The value of QR codes for content marketing. (from Katie McCaskey)

How to maximize your social media productivity. (from Brainzooming)

Happy New Year, and let's keep learning in 2011!

Doing More with Less: Digital Communications for Business Development

2010-12-21T16:30:00Z

Last week, I attended and spoke at the British Consulate's IPA Forum in New York City. Participants were economic development agency representatives from European countries. These folks are charged with creating business and jobs in their resspective countries - business that is generated by US-based companies.

The theme of the morning was doing more with less in a global recession. In my presentation entitled The New Biz Dev, I spoke about leveraging the digital environment for business development purposes. My remarks focused on tips, tools and low-cost ideas for utilizing digital communications (including social networking).

]]> The thread running through my talk was that the Internet can be used to build long-lasting relationships and save money. I cautioned folks, however, that "resources" include time and money and building relationships takes time!

I touched upon using hosted solutions for relationship building efforts. Whether its an ASP for an e-mail campaign or document sharing for collaboration, hosted solutions is the way to go. Ease of use, cost and reliability are only a few reasons that our shop rarely licenses software these days.

The New Biz Dev - IPA Forum

We also discussed customer service and how social networking solicits feedback, saves money and builds relationships. We mentioned Salesforce and MailChimp as examples of customer relationship management tools that are integrating social media into sales efforts and marketing campaigns.

Much of Tuvel's outreach efforts include hanging out where our customers and prospects are - on their turf. We talked about making it easy for you and your company to be found and to do business with you, but I also discussed the importance of finding where your customers are online (even asking them directly through surveys and customer communications - two-way conversations). I emphasized the importance of developing and nurturing a permission-based house file rather than renting e-mail lists.

We had a fun discussion about contests and promotions, trying to impress upon attendees that all people like to have fun - whether they come from business to business, government to citizen or business to consumer sectors.

We developed a nice list of low cost tools that you can use for listening, creating content and sharing. You can find it here:

The New Biz Dev: Useful Tools

What We're Reading, November 19th

2010-11-19T14:07:00Z

It's been a few months since our last edition of "What We're Reading", and we thought it was high time to bring it back - especially with all the fantastic posts we've been reading and resources we've found about social media, blogger outreach and online marketing. Here are a sampling of what we've discovered, all wrapped up in a handy post for your Friday reading enjoyment:

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Seven Steps for Live-Tweeting Success from the NTEN Blog

QR Codes: 4 Tips to Release Content to the Wild from the Content Marketing Institute Blog

Something we're very excited about: Twitter’s Official Analytics Product Has Arrived from Mashable

Social media can sizzle on the trade show floor from BtoB Magazine

The Blogger Outreach Group on LinkedIn is a great resource for information and discussion on blogger outreach strategy and tactics.

Do you use Hootsuite? Even if you don't, please take our poll:

How to Create On-Site Event Buzz Through Social Media

2010-11-16T21:27:00Z

We've created, launched and managed social media campaigns and presences for a variety of events, and that includes on-site social media engagement. We definitely have a number of tried-and-true tactics for creating buzz and interest during an event through social media, and I'd like to share some of those with you here.

]]> Live tweet sessions. By tweeting bite-sized, but pertinent, pieces of information from sessions, workshops and keynotes, you're providing value to those in attendance and those outside the event who are watching the Twitter stream. Interest and buzz is generated from retweets.

Tips: It's important that people watching your tweets know the source of the information in your live session tweets, so be sure to include the speaker's name (usually their last name for brevity). Better yet, include their Twitter handle if they have one. Photos of speakers or panels are great session-tweeting fodder as well. Jeff Hurt has a great post on tweeting at conferences and events, which has excellent pointers and is definitely worth a read.

Retweet others. Your attendees are the most important part of your event – and your best source for relevant, insightful information as it happens. They're tweeting about what is important to them, and retweeting that information puts them front and center and gets them more involved in the event as a whole.

Tip: Thank your Twittering attendees for their insights with @ reply "Thank you" notes.

Post photos & video. Don't just tell people what's going on; show them by posting photos and videos straight from the event to your outposts (including your event blog). Post clips from keynotes and sessions, photos of popular speakers and products, on-the-spot video interviews with attendees – be creative!

Better yet...

Encourage attendees to post content to outposts from the event. Create a hub on Facebook or Flickr for attendees to share their own event experiences through videos and photos. Promote it through the event website and on-site signage and print materials, or even build it into an event-specific mobile app. Encourage people to tag them with your event name and hashtag for maximum exposure.

Ask questions to encourage conversation and feedback. Ask people to share their feedback of the event through your outposts, or even create quick polls and surveys using Twtpoll or SurveyMonkey.

Tip: Try using Google Moderator to gather feedback as well.

Create content that involves your attendees. I love Paper.li, and I've discovered that what they offer is perfect for events. It's a great way to feature your attendees and the content that matters to them. If you gather Twitter account IDs from your attendees when they register, create a Twitter list and add them – then create a daily with Paper.li from that list.

Tip: Create similar dailies from lists of your speakers and exhibitors.

Get exhibitors involved. The expo floor can be a great source of excitement, so work through social media to build relationships between attendees and exhibitors. Bring groups together through Tweetups and demos at booths. Post photos of cool displays and swag giveaways.

Tip: Create an expo floor scavenger hunt using location-based services like Foursquare or Gowalla, or event-friendly location-based services like Scvngr or Double Dutch.

Plan & hold mini-meetups & tweetups. These don't have to be large, extravagent, intricately-planned shindigs at expensive venues with open bars and free food. Why not have mini-meetups and tweetups, planned and promoted ahead of time and taking place at a designated spot at the event, but held only for the purpose of getting people together to meet and converse. Maybe offer some freebies, hold a special giveaway or make it into a meet-and-greet for a speaker or esteemed guest – but it doesn't have to be more than that.

Tip: Suzanne Carawan tweeted an excellent idea for an on-site meetup that I wanted to include:

5 Reasons Your Social Media Marketing Efforts Will Fail

2010-11-03T16:32:07Z

When it comes to community-building through social media outposts, I've seen some awesome examples of how it should be done. I've also seen some awesomely dismal campaigns that made me wonder why they were ever conceived. They could learn a lot from Yoda.

]]>

Do or Do Not. There is no try. Get it? If you don't believe in the potential of social media as a valuable part of your marketing strategy and/or you don't put in the effort needed to make it successful, then that is why you fail.

I've put together this list, hoping that it will help someone bring their social media efforts back to life or get started in the right direction!

All broadcast, all the time. Social media marketing should not be all about you – it should be all about your community members. Promote your brand and products, but above all, promote your loyal customers. Interact with and involve them. Make it a two-way conversation.

Little or no activity. One of the biggest turn-offs to someone considering following, liking, or otherwise joining a social media community is lack of activity. There's no value in them being a part of your community if there's nothing going on. It's important to keep tweets and posts up-to-date with relevant content and respond to questions and comments in a timely manner.

Nothing exciting or of value to your community members. Online communities should be relevant and offer value to community members, and successful online communities are ones in which members are excited to participate. Your social media outposts are your communities, so give your members a reason to participate by offering them content, offers and support that will keep them engaged.

Little or no promotion of your outposts. If you're not promoting your social outposts through your website, email campaigns, and offline materials, how do you expect people to know they exist? If you want social media to be a successful part of your marketing plan, you have to make your social media presence known to your existing and potential customers.

Under-utilization of available social media assets. Your "social media assets" are content items, tools and anything else you have available that will only help your social media marketing efforts. These include content like blog posts, podcasts, and press releases, as well as tools like hashtags, Twitter lists, event pages and groups. Take stock of these assets and map out how they can best be used to your advantage.

Utilizing New Twitter and Facebook Features for Events: Join the #Engage365 Chat on Friday, 10/15!

2010-10-13T18:06:00Z

I'm sure you've been seeing lots of tweets, blog posts and articles about the new features on Facebook (such as Groups) and the "New Twitter" (which kind of makes me think of “New Coke”, but let’s hope it doesn’t go down the same way). But how can all of these new features help event marketers engage attendees, build event communities and generate awareness and buzz?

]]> Join us on Friday, October 15th at 1pm ET as I moderate an Engage 365 Water Cooler chat on Twitter about how new Facebook and Twitter features can be utilized by event marketers. It will be an open discussion where everyone can share their thoughts and ideas – or simply lurk and listen! You can follow and join the discussion on Tweetchat and with the hashtag #engage365.

As a primer, here are a few articles and posts that will help you get up to speed on Facebook Groups and Twitter's new features:

A Deep Dive on Facebook Groups and Their Potential by David Armano

Facebook Groups Simplified by Jeff Korhan

10 Tips for Managing The New Facebook Groups by Jason Markow

7 Really Cool Things About the New Twitter by Tia Peterson

Twitter Developing New Feature for Events: Goodbye Hashtags? by Jenise Fryatt

Do Virtual and Hybrid Events Cannibalize F2F Events?

2010-09-21T18:26:44Z

I recently had the pleasure of attending EventCamp Twin Cities - without leaving my office. How? I attended the virtual event, held in tandem with the live, face-to-face (F2F) event in the Twin Cities. I was extremely impressed by the entire event and particularly the virtual side. Thanks to technology partners like Intefy and Sonic Foundry, as well as awesome organizers like Samuel J. Smith of Interactive Meeting Technology, Ray Hansen of Appevision and EventCamp Twin Cities virtual host Emilie Barta, my experience as a virtual attendee was as if I were right there in the room, participating with everyone else. I came away from EventCamp Twin Cities filled with excitement to attend (in person) the upcoming EventCamp East Coast in Philadelphia.

I even tweeted during the event about my excitement...

]]>

...which got this response from @suzannecarawan:

It definitely made me think. Since we work with many event organizers on social media, outreach and community building for their events, this experience made me wonder about how well virtual and hybrid (mix of virtual and F2F) events could work for larger conferences. I think that the possibilities would be endless and present enormous opportunity to engage not only past attendees who could not make it to the event, but new audiences interested in the content on offer. I recall a song from my Girl Scout days we used to sing at the end of troop meetings: "Make new friends, but keep the old/One is silver and the other gold." Build new relationships, build upon existing ones.

Unfortunately, there seems to be this assumption that virtual and hybrid events will cannibalize attendance to the live event. In reality, virtual and hybrid events (when done right) can actually help increase attendance to subsequent live events by broadening the event’s reach and generating interest from new audience bases. Read about the case of Cisco and the phenomenal results they achieved from their hybrid events – where 55% of virtual attendees were "net-new" and 35% said they’d attend a live event. Another example of hybrid events that work is the IN Zone at TS2 2010, where the "Continuing the Conversation" virtual audience grew by 106% as they watched interviews conducted by Emilie Barta and participated in discussions via social media channels.

What we have to get past is the notion that virtual and hybrid events will become a reason for attendees not to pay. Instead, they’re a reason for those who cannot attend the live event to still participate. Why would you want to alienate those who cannot attend in person just because they’re not paying the big bucks to do so? Hybrid events present a huge opportunity to engage a portion of your audience during a live event that you wouldn’t have engaged otherwise. They may already be following your event via Twitter, Facebook, blogs or other online news sources – why not acknowledge those folks and invite them to participate where they are?

Plus, if your content is strong and valuable enough, you might even consider charging a fee to attend virtually, or even offering a tiered model with free and premium virtual attendance. In fact, according to a recent survey of 112 associations conducted by Tagoras, only 2-3% of groups that are planning virtual conferences for the first time say they will offer it for free – in fact, most are looking to charge as close to the price of the F2F conferences as they can. Michael McCurry of Experient wrote an excellent article exploring revenue models for hybrid events, which I highly recommend reading if you’re considering “hybridizing” your event.

So - are you convinced yet, or do you still have reservations? What have your experiences been with virtual and hybrid events as related to your live event attendance?

10 Pitfalls to Avoid in Social Media Marketing

2010-09-01T15:36:00Z

Tuvel Communication's Managing Director Mitch Arnowitz recently contributed a guest post at Social Media Today entitled "10 Pitfalls to Avoid in Social Media Marketing." It ended up getting quite a good reaction, including some comments about one of the points made - assigning social media marketing to interns.

Read the article over at Social Media Today (check out the comments as well) and let us know your opinion!