Unconventional Wisdom - The Tuvel Communications Blog – Engaging Your Customers in Unconventional Ways

11 Lessons Learned: Social Media & Event Marketing

May 10, 2010 by Kari Rippetoe

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).

HOW TO: Geo-Target Your Press Release Distribution

May 7, 2010 by Kari Rippetoe

We were recently approached by a non-profit who wanted some quick advice on how to target the distribution of their press release to a specific city (known as “geo-targeting”). This is a great question, because there are so many press release distribution services that boast national exposure to major outlets; but what if national distribution isn’t what you want? What if you just want local coverage of your news?

Marketers: Do You “Like” Facebook’s Open Graph?

April 29, 2010 by Kari Rippetoe

With last week’s pivotal announcement of Facebook’s Open Graph, the “one graph to rule them all” as it’s been referred to rather humorously (and yet, at the same time quite ominously), the Interwebs have been all abuzz with talk of how this will affect the web as we know it. While the ubiquitous term “Web 2.0” refers to the next generation of the web – an increasingly social entity due to social media and networking sites like Twitter, YouTube, and of course Facebook – the question on many minds is how the web will evolve with the introduction of Open Graph and whether it will now become one big social network.