On arrival I bumped into a chap whom I met and told about the SMC_MCR a couple of weeks previously in Liverpool. He had made the trip deliberately to see what the SMC_MCR was all about. At the beginning there was a little competition to win a twitter T shirt which I thought looked ace. The tweeple who where there had to tweet a message with the hash tag SMC_MCR and the first three tweets in won a t shirt each. It was rather un-rehearsed, and could have gone smoother but I thought it was allot of fun and next time it will be better and I want to win! Last night were two discussions one which was about digital festival something to do with the Future sonic festival, which I am disappointed I missed out on I didn't even manage to speak to anyone ells about what the Digital festival talk was like or about. So if anyone can summarize it for someone with a short attention span then Id love to know.
Gray compulsive tweeter and poster shows us his twitterific t shirt!
I However did attend a Twitter discussion that was about promoting something through twitter or as the speakers said "How not to" or "learn from their mistakes". 3 Journalists had a brilliant Idea to put together and publish a book almost totally by twitter and an online publishing company called Lulu. Twitters started to spread as a call for submissions to write comedy stories and humorous tales to compile a book titled "twitter titters" of which the proceeds would go to Comic Relief. The submissions then went through a judging process then onto selection, One of the contributions was even from comedian Dave Spikey so they attracted quite allot of attention and given they had no real promotion experience the efforts where on plugging the book with celebrity tweeters such a Stephen Fry who even tweeted back.
Eventually the stories where decided, edited and the book put together in Lulu, which sounded like it needed a degree to get a result from. But in the end it happened and overall the book was a success and they managed to raise a good donation to support comic relief. The talk also dabbed into how easy it was for someone to become malicious and use twitter for the opposite and begin to push negative information, especially given that this was for a charity and a good cause I thought that wasn't a good sport.
The talk was informal, funny and interesting with drama and jubilation. Toward the end we started cramming questions in. I was interested in how they promoted using twitter and using it as a medium for chinese whispers style advertising or simple viral advertising. It was apparent to me that these experienced twitters who had used twitter for a long time now and on a regular basis, mostly used it as basic communication. If they had a more of a planned and strategic use of twitter could the project have encouraged greater response and re tweets. It was unfortunate that this seemed to effect the message they needed to get out. At one point it was mentioned about spamming and how we have to be incredibly careful as it seems so easy to do using twitter. Probably because it is so easy to keep sending messages. May be a tactic for a twitter campaign is to plan and timetable when you twit next so you don't over twit. Count down tweets could be a good Idea to start by mentioning when something has begun and with updates people can measure and return to like coming back to a good story.
I for one will be keeping an eye out for good promotion Ideas using twitter, The more loaded, cleverly written and pointed tweets are the more likely it is to targeting audiences and the more likely you will get action from your intent. Tweet promoting can clearly be very effective for example the twitchiker a great Idea that has helped a man travel right around the world and raise heaps of money for charity! There is no doubt a great Idea promoted carefully can become a great success. I am fast becoming obsessed with twitter, although my usage could be higher, I am fascinated with how to get messages passed around and how we can promote without in your face advertising.
Over all twitter titters was a really good Idea and the team clearly worked really hard on it, the book is still available and proceeds still go to Comic Relief. I would love to help any one who is interested in perhaps promoting something through twitter so I can get more experience and practice using this media to spread a message. So if you have something you want to promote drop me a line and perhaps I could help plan a Twitter campaign for you? or let me know if you see any interesting uses of twitter for subtle promotion.
To Finish The SMC is a really informative and great night, good people and a good atmosphere Ill be going every month!
Thanks for a great night with the Social Media Gurus and Goblins.
