Digital Media Buzz > Twitter Parties: Next Big Trend in eMarketing

Twitter Parties: Next Big Trend in eMarketing

By Lauren Fritsky

OfficeMax learned this year that using social media to connect with the right people can pay off.

The company was able to partner with a group of mom bloggers to bolster its “A Day Made Better” campaign, which for the last three years has surprised 1,000 under-funded teachers across the country with $1,000 worth of classroom supplies. With the help of MomItForward.com, an online community for women who want to make a difference, OfficeMax was able to generate more buzz about the effort this year through online Twitter parties and offline events.

Twitter parties and tweetups are fairly new e-marketing endeavors being used by companies and firms to promote products, services and causes to fans and customers. They enable a targeted versus a blanket approach. OfficeMax, for instance, decided to reach out to mothers because the company knows moms interact often with their children’s teachers.

“It’s looking at social media differently,” says Jennifer Rook, manager of public relations at OfficeMax. “If I can reach one person and tell them about a cause, they truly embrace it and become advocates. There’s a willingness to do this on more of a local level.”

Two Twitter parties hosted by OfficeMax and MomItForward brought as many as 500 individuals together to discuss education topics in awareness of A Day Made Better. About 30 MomItForward members who came to be known as Max Moms also hosted offline events in various cities that helped raise school supplies for local teachers. OfficeMax gave gift cards to the women who hosted the events, which were attended by anywhere from 10 people to 100, to give away. Many of the Max Moms also gave away prizes on their own websites.

OfficeMax has already seen positive results from the efforts. More than 5,000 tweets have been posted on the A Day Made Better campaign; 500 people attended Twitter parties; more than 60 blog posts were created; 38 Whrrl stories were posted and OfficeMax’s Facebook page fan count doubled. In addition, the hometown events surprised more than 60 teachers with classroom supplies.

One of the keys to OfficeMax’s success was not over-branding, Rook says. While OfficeMax products were involved, the onus was on the women who hosted the events and the teachers they were supporting. “It just really worked well to show what people were doing on a grassroots level,” she says.

Marie Domingo, principal of the San Francisco-based Domingo Communications, has helped run more than 15 tweetups to help promote her clients’ brands, new products or services. Her Media SF Tweetup, held in August with two other communications firms, allowed Twitter followers to meet more than 25 local media officials speed-dating style. More than 250 people attended.

“The true value came with the interaction that public relations, marketing executives and members of the press walked away with,” Domingo says. “Let’s face it — most PR folks don’t get much face time with press folks unless they have something specific to pitch. This tweetup gave everyone an opportunity to query press and PR folks alike with any sort of question they were willing to ask.”

Domingo advises other firms who want to host tweetups to get started early and try to avoid potential conflicts with other events or meet-ups. Additional tips include partnering with other companies that have similar initiatives that don’t conflict, leveraging tools like Eventbrite or Twtvite to track registrants, emails, Twitter names and company or media outlets and rehearsing the flow of the evening.

Amy Martin, of Digital Royalty, LLC, organized the first professional sports tweetup for the Phoenix Suns basketball team in January prior to a game against the Minnesota Timberwolves. About 150 fans watched the team warm up, talked with player Shaquille O’Neal and general manager Steve Kerr and got T-shirts and drink discounts. The event generated the sale of 125 game tickets; buzz on 334 websites; an ESPN TV segment and 454 “SunsTweetUp” hashtag mentions prior to the tweetup and 450 “Suns” brand mentions the day of the event.

“Planning for the tweetup was really a collaboration between all disciplines,” Martin says. “Even though I did the groundwork and lobbied for the event, it was ticket sales/Ticket master, marketing, interactive services, PR, community relations, the general manager and even the player himself [Shaquille O’Neal] who had to be on board. The fans helped plan the event by providing suggestions.”

After the Suns tweetup, Martin identified ways to enhance the fan experience for future events. When another one of Digital Royalty’s clients, the Chicago White Sox, held its first tweetup in September, Martin suggested nametags, because “otherwise the experience can resemble a blind date, which doesn’t always lend to the most social environment.”

“Also, we used a hashtag specific to the event and interacted with fans that were unable to attend in person,” she adds. “I even fielded a question from a fan that lived outside of the country during the Shaquille question-and-answer session.”

Martin says it helps to have a connected community online to begin with, whether it’s a fan base or a consumer base. It also helps if the online community members have messaged or tweeted each other beforehand. The biggest key to success is listening to supporters.

“Listen to fans, and ask them what they want out of the experience,” she says. “Build that strong relationship with your fan base ahead of time. Give fans plenty of lead time to build momentum and buzz about the event themselves.”