Advice and tips on planning a tweetup
After holding a successful tweetup for the Miami Herald back in June, I’ve received questions from a few fellow online newspaper journalists asking for tips and advice on organizing a tweetup. Most newspapers have already jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon and are starting to test the water to see how effective social media can be in driving traffic to their home page. Realizing that Twitter isn’t just another place to dump our RSS feeds, we’re learning to interact with our audience in ways we weren’t able to do in print. And that’s where tweetups come in.
To our advantage, the South Florida social media community is already very active. On any given month, there are at least a dozen networking events and mixers to attend that all focus around technology. After a coworker and I had started attending some of these mixers regularly, we decided it was time to organize a tweetup of our own for the Miami Herald.
Mallory (@malcolli), who helps manage the @miamiherald account, Bill (@wcpassonno/@heraldsports) and I started to throw around our ideas for a Miami Herald tweetup and wrote up a proposal to submit to our boss. From there, a team of social media advocates in the newsroom was put together to organize the tweetup. The group consisted of the three of us, our boss, two social media/technology reporters, and an active social media user from marketing. The seven of us hammered out the details pretty quickly and before we knew it, without too much arm twisting or effort on anyone’s part, the day of our tweetup had arrived.
Here are some advice on holding your own tweetup.
Crowd at Tobacco Road for the Miami Herald's first tweetup.
Convincing your boss
With the decline of the print edition, we can no longer expect the audience to come to us. We must go where our audiences are and reach out to them. That’s why newspapers need to be active on social networks. If we’re going to stay relevant, we need to be relevant in our audience’s lives.
Here’s a statistic you can give your boss to illustrate social media’s relevance: The Austin American-Statesman (@statesman) got over 300,000 page views during their coverage of Hurricane Ike last August/September (2008) through the use of Twitter during the storm. (Source: Robert Quigley, Social Media Editor for the Austin-American Statesman)
Why bother with a tweetup, though? By holding a tweetup, you’re giving something back to the local social media crowd. They want to interact with each other and with your producers, reporters, and editors. Letting the audience get to know your staff face-to-face establishes real relationships. These users will be more likely to follow your tweets more closely, to interact with you on Twitter and other social networks, to retweet your links, and to tell friends.
Get your staff to attend (even if they don’t tweet)
Find an ally in your newsroom to help you. Having an ally will help you reach more people in your newsroom and help keep you positive as you encounter resistance. Many old school newspaper journalists are resistance to change. We all know that. Having an ally or a group of people working on the tweetup can help you gain support and help change peoples minds about why social media is important.
When you have the specifics set, send out an email to the entire newsroom staff. Let them know what the event is, and why they should be interested. I’d encourage you to get as many staffers to attend the event – even if they don’t tweet. When you’re publicizing your tweetup on Twitter, you want to let the public know that this is a chance for them to meet the people who bring them the news every day. If a reporter or columnist doesn’t tweet, having them at the tweetup still allows for them to connect with the audience. Maybe it will even get them to realize that they should be participating. We were pleased to have around 15 staffers attend our first tweetup, all of whom are active on Twitter. Next time, we hope to get more staffers out to the event.
RSVP
I’d recommend using an RSVP/invite service to keep track of how many people are expected at your tweet up. This will allow you to plan for the event accordingly, as well as to give your venue a heads up the day before or day of your tweetup. Also, keep an eye on your RSVP list to see who is or is not attending. We’ve seen success at ours and other tweetups of organizers at-replying active users who have not yet RSVP’d or getting people to change their ‘Maybe’ to a yes. By messaging them individually, they realize that they’re talking to a real person and not a face-less organization. It makes them realize that their presence counts.
We didn’t know what kind of response the public was going to have, so we used twtvite.com to keep a headcount for us. As the day of the tweetup arrived, the RSVP numbers started to balloon. We were hoping for 50 people, since that’s (roughly) the number that attended the first Sun-Sentinel tweetup a month or two before, but by the day of our tweetup, we had 128 RSVP’s for yes, and 32 maybes. We estimate that we had anywhere from 130 to 150 people show up for the event.
If you’re looking for an RSVP service for your tweetup, we had a great experience using twtvite, but there are other free services available: Eventbrite, Evite, and Meetup.com are some of the services that come to mind.
Spread the word
One of the hardest parts about organizing an event is getting people to attend. To that end, you really should be tweeting the details of your tweetup daily on your organizations main account. Include “Pls RT” to encourage followers to help spread the word. It may go without saying, but retweet the details on your personal account and get all of your coworkers to do the same. The day before and day of your tweetup is when you really need to start creating a conversation about the tweetup.
Tip: Use a hashtag to keep track of what people are saying about your tweetup leading up to the event and afterwards. We used #heraldtweetup for our tweetup (and future tweetups), or you can use a local hashtag like #miamitweetups. Just remember to keep the hashtag as short/consise as possible.
Location, location, location
The location you choose for your tweetup can make or break the event. If you choose a venue that’s too small or not appropriate to the tweetup, it will be what attendees talk about and remember from the tweetup. When picking a location, keep a few things in mind:
- Size matters. Choose a venue that can accommodate more people than you expect.
- A/C! Does the area have sufficient air conditioning and ventilation? With crowded indoor venue, you could risk a spike in temperature, so be prepared!
- Plan for the worst. In South Florida, that means plan for rain. If you’ve booked an outside location and it starts to pour, be sure there’s a backup plan.
- Work with the venue. Make sure that you’ve got their approval and let them know what’s in it for them. By letting the owners know the number of people you can expect, it might mean they’re willing to give you some drink or meal specials (which, of course, would give you something to promote and incentive for followers to make it to the event).
At the tweetup
Drinks help entice followers to attend
Name tags at Tweetups are important. Not every one uses their picture as their avatar and there are just too many names and faces to keep straight. Make it easy for your attendees by providing name tags. They don’t have to be fancy. Some RSVP services provide a name tag generator (twtvite does), but I like to keep things simple. Simple “Hello, my name is” tags work fine. Don’t forget the Sharpies, though.
Encourage your coworkers to “work the room.” Talk to as many people as you can. That’s why they’re attending the event. Trade business cards. Get feedback. Tweetups enable us to connect with our audience on a personal level, so let the guard down and have fun.
After the tweetup
Afterward, thank as many people as possible for coming and continue the conversations on Twitter.
We encouraged attendees to add their photos to our Flickr group after the event was over. I populated the group with a set of frame grabs from my video. Then we started soliciting people who we knew had cameras at the event to submit their photos.
Related links
Flickr
#HeraldTweetup Group pool
Mallory Colliflower
Improve your Twitter street cred. Get your ass to a tweetup.
Miami Herald’s #HeraldTweetup thanks you.
Mashable
How to organize a successful tweetup
Miami Herald Tweetup, June 2009 from Lori Todd on Vimeo.
Drink specials help entice followers.