Tuvel Communications Blog

May 04, 2011

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

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?

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Technorati Tags: Twitter social media nonprofits associations events

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April 20, 2011

10 Tips for Successful Social Media Contests & Promotions

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!

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Technorati Tags: social media contests events event marketing Twitter Facebook Foursquare

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January 11, 2011

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

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)

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Technorati Tags: social media community-building online communities blogger outreach

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July 16, 2010

What We're Reading, July 16th

Happy Friday! It's been a busy and exciting week here at Tuvel - wrapping up projects, kicking off new campaigns, seeing great results from current ones. It's always so exciting to see the fruits of our labor! Tuvel was also featured in two articles this week - from Convene Magazine and the Omnipress Blog - which are part of our weekly recommended reading list today (but don't just read them because we're featured - they are truly interesting and insightful reads)!

• Online Event Communities...A Social Media Marketing Opportunity for Exhibitors and Sponsors from The Conference Handouts (Omnipress Blog)
• Will location-based applications like Foursquare find a place in the meetings industry? from Convene Magazine
• 6 Social Media Metrics You Should Be Tracking from Mike Brown for Social Media Today
• The Boston Globe Takes Readers on Mobile Scavenger Huntfrom Mashable

Finally, we leave you this week with a fond farewell...from Old Spice Guy:

Continue reading "What We're Reading, July 16th" »

Technorati Tags: social media metrics event marketing community building Foursquare Old Spice Guy

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July 02, 2010

What We're Reading, July 1st

Happy 4th of July weekend! If you live in the USA (or even if you're an American living abroad), you're more than likely gearing up for some serious food, festivities, and of course, fireworks, and we here at Tuvel Communications hope you have a spectacular - and, most importantly, safe - Independence Day!

To help you wind down your week, here are a few selections from our weekly reading list. Enjoy!

• Seven Reasons to Keep it Real in Social Media from: Marijean Jaggers
• The Debate on Scheduled Tweets from Jenise Fryatt (guest post at Liz King Events)
• Olay, Gap, Pepsi Run Geo-Social Campaigns - but Not on Foursquare from: ClickZ
• Welcoming New Members to your Online Community from: Laurel Papworth (via Social Media Today)
• Social Media's Impact on Healthcare from: Joel Selzer, HCNM Keynote

And, to help you get into the patriotic spirit (and ease into the weekend), here's our 4th of July gift to you:

Continue reading "What We're Reading, July 1st" »

Technorati Tags: social media online community building Twitter Foursquare geo-location 4th of july video

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June 08, 2010

9 Steps to Finding Your Rock Stars for a Community Outreach Program

In my previous post, I talked about the importance of a community outreach program to find your rock stars. To reiterate what community outreach is, it's engaging and building relationships with your influential customers (your "rock stars") in order to generate positive word-of-mouth for your company, organization, and/or products. I highly recommend reading the previous post to get a better idea of the importance of and principles behind community outreach, but today I'm going to talk about how to find your rock stars through community outreach.

Community outreach is more of an art than a science – it is, after all, about relationship-building. There are certainly different methodologies depending on the audience and marketing channel (blogs, forums, groups, social networks, etc.); however, there is a set of best practices that form the foundation of any community outreach program.

Today, I'd like to share with you Tuvel's outreach methodology in the hopes it gives you a better understanding of these best practices.

Step 1: Articulate Goals & Develop a Plan — Like with any marketing and communications campaign, it’s very important to define achievable goals and lay out a clear plan for your community outreach program. Ask yourself these questions:

• What is the purpose of the outreach campaign? Increase awareness, increase sales/donations/membership/other type of conversion, or all of the above?


• How many influencers do you intend to find and reach out to?


• What is your timeframe for the campaign?


• What kind of response and/or conversion rates are you expecting? What are other metrics are important for determining success?

Step 2: Identify your audience segments and marketing channels — Once goals are determined, identify your specific audience segments to reach out to, as well as the marketing channels you’ll target – blogs, forums, email lists, groups, social networks, etc. Once you’ve identified audience and channels, you can then begin your research.

Step 3: Identify & Validate Groups — As you conduct your research, be sure to validate each group and individual for overall effectiveness as message carriers, based on criteria such as marketing opportunity, activity (has anything been posted recently?) and relevance. Actually read some of the posts on each blog, forum, or group to get a good idea of the hot topics and how you can best be of benefit to them.

Step 4: Create Contact Database - Include information for researched bloggers and other new media publishers. Each entry includes the name of the communication vehicle, marketing channel, contact name and e-mail address.

Step 5: Communications Planning - Develop appropriate campaign messages based on audience, marketing channel and mode of communication for those identified, then test messages to determine the most appropriate formats for online dissemination. It’s also important to give a very brief background and get to the ask as quickly as possible – don’t make the message too long or heavy with marketing-speak. Speak to your community in their language.

Step 6: Program Execution — Once messaging is right, begin rolling out the campaign:

• Customize and personalize each note you send, referencing a specific post you found of interest.


• Make it as easy as possible for them to post something, whether that means providing sample text or a link to the information they need.


• Engage in discussions within the community – It’s important to engage in open and transparent conversations with your community influencers on their blogs, forums, or other platform. This means representing your company, but identifying yourself honestly and not hiding behind a logo. For instance, posting thank you comments in response to blog posts published as a result of your efforts is a way to further engage blogger and build relationships with them.


• Encourage others to pass the word along by providing an easy way for them to share your message.

Step 7: Follow-up and build relationships – When someone responds to your message, respond to them in a timely manner. If someone promises to post in their blog, follow up after about a week to give them a gentle reminder. If they do post something for you, send them a thank you note and leave a comment on their blog. Be as helpful as possible when they ask questions.

Step 8: Program Reporting and Analysis - You’ve already determined your metrics for success as part of step 1, so now it’s time to analyze the effectiveness of your program and return on investment. This also includes gauging response and feedback to your program from those to which you reached out. Don’t wait until the end of your program to do this – it’s important to gauge effectiveness throughout the campaign (see step 9).

Step 9: Revise, Improve and Do It Again —Revise your messaging based on feedback and campaign response. Test different messages to determine best response.

Our methodology will, of course, differ from other methodologies for outreach programs – but this will still give you a basic idea of how you can find and reach out to your rock stars – and build lasting relationships with them. For examples of how Tuvel has implemented community outreach on behalf of clients, check out our case studies for the National Association of Broadcasters and Share Our Strength.

Continue reading "9 Steps to Finding Your Rock Stars for a Community Outreach Program" »

Technorati Tags: community outreach blogger outreach

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May 26, 2010

Finding Your Rock Stars: Why a Community Outreach Program is Important

Photo credit: DavidDMuir

How do you use PR to reach your buyers? Do you issue press releases and pitch to your media list of journalists, hoping to get a write-up or some sort of media exposure? Or do you reach out directly to the people who are actively buying and evangelizing your products or services and influencing hundreds or thousands (hundreds of thousands, even) other buyers via blogs, forums, social networks, news sites, podcasts, and other consumer communities – your rock stars?

Let me ask you another question: which one of these methods just mentioned do you think is more effective?

OK, I didn't mean to lead you on this, because even if you're using the former method (press releases to a media list), you may be getting the results you want – and that's excellent. I'm not trying to say that there's a right answer and a wrong answer, but I am telling you that in the last 5 years, outreach has become so much more than simply media outreach. The PR landscape has shifted to community outreach. According to David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR (an excellent book I highly recommend, by the way), "The Internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on media."

What is community outreach? It's about generating positive word-of-mouth and building relationships with your influential customers in order to drive conversions (whether that's buying a product, attending a conference, subscribing to a publication, getting donations or another action taken). It's also about finding, as I mentioned before, your rock stars. These are actual customers who are bloggers, forum admins, list owners, group leaders, or other thought leaders who are actively talking about your products and spreading the good word about your company to other buyers like them; but, most importantly, they are influencers within your customer community. When they talk, people listen.

So, if a press clip and media exposure is what you want, then the media is who you reach out to. If you want buyers, though, you find and reach out to your rock stars. This is why community outreach is so crucial to both your PR and marketing efforts. Besides, if you don’t find the influencers, you can be sure that the competition (or even your "coop-etition" – a cross between a competitor and someone with which you're in cooperation/partnership) will!

But you don't just pitch to them like you would a media list of journos – you have to build relationships by following these principles:

• Offer value. Tune your radio to WIIFM (What's In It For Me) and listen to what this person needs and/or wants from your products, then offer them something that addresses those needs and wants. Make your communication benefit-driven, rather than feature-driven.


• Be authentic. Introduce yourself. Tell them who you represent and why you're reaching out. Don’t hide behind a corporate brand or misrepresent yourself. Don’t overhype or speak in too much marketing jargon. Put on your buyer's cap.


• Be personal. Call them by name. Talk about their site and a post in particular that you found of particular interest. Make the connection between their site and your company/products so they see that your paying attention and not just pitching blindly.


• Be relevant. Reach out to those individuals and groups that will be interested in what you have to offer. Your chances of building a relationship are much greater if those to which you're reaching out understand why you are making contact.

In my next post, I’ll talk about how to find your rock stars for a community outreach program. Stay tuned!

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Technorati Tags: online communications community outreach blogger outreach social media social networking wom marketing word of mouth marketing community building

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May 19, 2010

HOW TO: Use Foursquare for a Conference (or an Exhibit Booth)

Tuvel Communications is the online PR firm for the NAB Show, and in addition to being the "voice" behind the show's social media outposts (Twitter, Facebook pages, LinkedIn group), we also devised and implemented creative pre-show and on-site social media promotions to engage attendees, drive registrations and generate excitement.

This year Foursquare became a major player in the social media game, and although we did not implement a full-scale location-based program, we did monitor how people were using Foursquare at the show, plus we came up with a last minute on-site contest that utilized the geo-location social network. What we learned was quite interesting and makes all of us here at Tuvel very excited about the possibilities Foursquare presents for the event marketing and conference business(s).

What did we do?

• We created a Foursquare page for the NAB Show using the address of the Las Vegas Convention Center, where it takes place every year. Here's how to do this:




1. Log in to Foursquare, or create an account if you don’t have one already. If you don’t have a smartphone, that’s OK – you can still create an account without it.


2. Set your location to the city where the event is taking place.


3. Click on Add Things at the top of the page.


4. Click on Add a New Venue.




• We came up with a last-minute contest to drive traffic to a particular session (namely, a session called "In Conversation With: Stan Lee", moderated by comedian and G4 Channel personality Chris Hardwick). We wanted attendees to check in to the session for a chance to win a copy of "The Amazing Spider-Man" comic book, autographed by creator Stan Lee himself. So, we created a Foursquare page by following the steps above and including all the pertinent details for the session (session name, event name, room number) in the Name field. We then promoted the contest the morning of the session via Twitter, Facebook and a post on the official NAB Show Blog.

What did we learn?

I mentioned earlier that throughout the show, we were monitoring how attendees were using Foursquare on-site. We found that in addition to people checking in through the show page we created, others were creating their own NAB Show pages on Foursquare and checking in through those. We also found that some exhibitors had created Foursquare pages for their own booths, using the same method outlined above (they used their company names and booth numbers in the Name fields).

I recently talked about our use of Foursquare in a discussion on the Engage 365 Community, and a great comment was made by John Barber that "the more event Foursquare pages that are added by your method, the longer becomes the flat list of places that all come up at the venue's main geo-location." This is a great point, and I would certainly not say our implementation method was in any way foolproof. This, however, is more attributable to the limits of the tool itself. When it comes to Foursquare's use at conferences, it's definitely not ready for prime time (although I hope to see that change soon).

As for our Stan Lee session contest, we garnered a grand total of 15 check-ins. Considering that it was a last-minute guerilla marketing tactic with literally a morning's worth of marketing to promote it and where we were basically experimenting with Foursquare's use at an individual conference session, I would say it worked pretty well.

Have you ever seen Foursquare used (or used it yourself) for event marketing? What were the results and how did you gauge them?

Continue reading "HOW TO: Use Foursquare for a Conference (or an Exhibit Booth)" »

Technorati Tags: Foursquare social media NAB Show geo-location location-based social networks event marketing

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May 10, 2010

11 Lessons Learned: Social Media & Event Marketing

Here at Tuvel Communications, we have executed conference and expo social media programs for clients like the NAB Show and 1105 Government Information Group. We've learned several lessons along the way, and I thought it would be useful to get these thoughts down on digital paper to share with you so can be better prepared when it comes to social media marketing at events.

• Start early. It takes time to build a relationship. You don't want the first communication from your event to be about passing a promo code along! We always try to keep in mind the old Internet adage to give and then take. We typically like to begin outreach efforts 6 months prior to an event.
• Create excitement! Content doesn't create excitement, people do. We were recently charged with driving attendees to an expo. People love to win, so we created Twitter raffles and contests. People got really excited about winning a conference ticket. We also ran a recent Facebook promotion where 'likes' (aka: fans) were asked to post photos from past shows. People got excited about posting and seeing each others photos (especially the ones from shows 15 or more years ago).
• Don't underestimate the power of face-to-face. This is really a lesson learned from Netpreneur/Coffee & DoughNets days. Developing an online relationship can be cemented by a face-to-face meeting. Nothing beats the interaction we see at client events. Strong online community building and networking done prior to the show complement offline meetings. Even better is if attendees are located in the same market as the event and you can bring them together before and after the show.
• Feedback and buzz are huge! Our company is metrics focused. Whether it's 'ROI', attendee increases or exhibitor traffic, we look to the numbers to partially determine our success. Other program metrics include size of the communities and how well they're engaged, profile traction, website analytics, and promo code tracking.

  Having said all of that, don't underestimate the importance of feedback from conference organizers, attendees and exhibitors. It's easy to feel excitement in the air when you hear comments like "you guys are doing something different this year" or "there really is a lot of activity, I notice it."

• Think through, take a deep breath and consider implications before acting. We recently identified a potential conflict when an attendee at a client event set up a blog that was inadvertently being mistaken for the 'official' show blog. We took a very deliberate 'honey vs. vinegar' approach of not reacting in a negative or aggressive fashion. Instead, we began building a relationship that eventually led to shared traffic. It would have been fool-hardy on our part to do anything else.
• Don't be afraid to try new things (or, you never know unless you try). At a recent client event, show organizers were nice enough to offer us a vacant booth, which we turned into a Social Media Suite. We got some perplexed expressions and strange questions for sure. Traffic was light, so on day two of the conference, we made a CVS run, dressed up the booth and held a Tweetup. We produced a Twitter chat for another client, unsure if anyone would even show up for the party. We ended up doubling registrations as a result of the hour-long chat.
• Beware of technology (or, the best laid plans...). We had a great on-site social media plan for a recent event, only to find out that lack of stable wifi prohibited us from uploading any photos, tweeting or posting. On another occasion, we were all set up for a Twitter chat only to have chat tools slow down to a screeching halt. Moral of the story: don't be surprised when inevitabilities of technology happen.
• Be patient. It takes time to get traction. We 're big on momentum and were dismayed when a couple of recent promotions didn't get off to a quick start. It took time for the word to spread and traffic to build up. But, we soldiered on and both promotions ended up going well. Thankfully, we didn't pull the plug before they took off.
• Always follow best practices. This goes without saying, but I figure it's worth repeating. Following best practices in terms of transparency and communication isn't only the right thing to do-- it's just good business.
• Its not just the numbers, it's who they are and where they're doing it that also count. We'd trade larger groups of passive readers for a handful of passionate supporters any day.
• Ask for referrals. We execute word-of-mouse campaigns. As soon as someone posts or passes our message along, we ask for referrals - bloggers, moderators, social networkers and list owners in their network. These folks might be interested in our communication and nothing beats an introduction!

What lessons have you learned from your event social media marketing efforts?

Continue reading "11 Lessons Learned: Social Media & Event Marketing" »

Technorati Tags: event marketing social media marketing social media for conferences outreach word-of-mouth marketing

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August 18, 2008

Building vertical communities

Recent reading of companies that create social networks made me think of our recent experiences in community building. Client results points up the opportunity with 'vertical communities'. For an eBook publisher, we have established groups on sites such as book glutton. For the same client, we have set up a group on doc sharing site Scribd.

For events, we have set up groups on upcoming. The opportunity, of course, is to build relationships and spread the word. To be successful, you have to keep groups engaged. This is also true of social networkers that establish several profiles for business.

Many of the services mentioned let you tag your information so that people can find it easier. This is similar to bookmarking sites like delicious. It's good to find people in large social networks like facebook. It's also worthwhile to build your own group in smaller but active turfs.

Continue reading "Building vertical communities" »

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