Digital ‘Trust’ Strategies in Building a Virtual Event Community

Social Media Platform Series- Twitter

The contents of the standard business strategy ‘briefcase’ include spreadsheets, presentations, business models, even the most overused clichés. Yet the intangible that separates your company from revenues is not powered by a microprocessor. Trust is what you need to achieve

with everyone who is involved in your brand and virtual event to achieve success.

Twitter

Twitter is as good place to start- because to engage it well requires that you ask before you tell. Twitter is like a good salesperson’s dream. By good, I mean salesperson who listens. The best sales scenario in the world, hence the best marketing scenario in the world, is one where your audience shares their needs and feelings. When we listen- we make no assumptions about our audience, we learn directly from them what is important- to them.

Here is a sample Twitter ‘program outline’ from which to build a community building program for your event;

·         What 5 event objectives are most important to your audience?

·         From the list above, what becomes the event’s digital persona that we want to portray that will create trust?

·         What processes will we use to insure we are both listening and executing on event community needs?

·         What categories will we establish measurable objectives for? Examples include overall interactions, registration growth, sponsor satisfaction, customer support, etc.

The first step in deploying Twitter in building audience is to establish an account that will allow you to begin earn input.

Assign your ‘Twitter Community Event Manager’

You need someone with real organizational knowledge who you trust to speak for the whole, in a consistent and coherent voice.

Identify an event theme

Your list of 5 attendee needs that your team comes up with is valuable in shaping your Twitter communications. Let’s say for example you are marketing a technology conference, and the attendees are going to your event to learn how to accelerate their data transfer. An event theme that centers on the virtues to accelerate can help you both brand the event and pose questions to your audience that encourage them to share what accelerate means to them.

Identify ‘event theme champions’ in your community

 Your Twitter Community Event Manager need to be the only leader of the community, and shouldn’t be. Reach out to your most engaged users. Community members have unique credibility and can be your greatest assets. Encourage users by converting them into brand ambassadors. Invite them to your private product launches, let them contribute to new feature requests, and ask them how you can improve. Not only will you gain firsthand, unfiltered information on how your products are used in the real world, but you'll also activate a network of ambassadors to give you the best thing you could ask for: positive word-of-mouth.

Establish a Twitter hash tag for your event
An excellent way to brand your event is to establish a Twitter hash tag. A hash tag is a key word or abbreviation preceded by the hash or number symbol such as #EC10. Hash tags encourage conference participants to use them in their tweets, and are a great tool in aggregating conversation and community around the event. If for example you want to brand your event theme around ‘acceleration’ – a potential hash tag would be #acceleration. Once you have indentified some them words- you can go to www.twubs.com to learn if any of those hash tags

are available.

Promote the Twitter hash tag early and often
Include your event hash tag on all marketing material and event communications. 

Create a daily Twitter electronic event paper

Using your Twitter event theme hash tag, you can publish and promote your event in a daily Twitter newspaper formatted site @  http://paper.li/. You can promote the paper daily via email with this link.

Link Twitter to your website: Integrate your messaging

Twitter can be set up to automatically update your followers every time you post a blog entry or that any RSS feed can be rebroadcast through your Twitter postings are examples of Twitter's strengths. But not too many automatically generated posts- otherwise trust evaporates. Another option is the ability to add buttons, badges, and widgets to sections of your other sites (articles, pages, etc.) so that visitors are able to tweet your content. Each article or page can be linked with a button that allows customers to send an update to their followers with a quick blurb and a link to your page. People tweet only interesting or compelling content, and a list of products or features may not be very intriguing to them.

(Find add-ons here: http://twitter.com/badges and http://sharethis.com/.)

Hold pre-conference Twitter contests and provide free registration, lodging and travel to winners
Ask potential attendees to tweet on an event topic, tweet a special code, or share why they want to get out of the upcoming event.   

To Be Twitter Worthy…

Trust comes from doing what you say you are going to do. Ask your audience about their needs and viewpoints, let them know how and when they will be rewarded, and honor it. When it comes to content, simply ask. It’s a great way to create dynamic conversation and community. And ask them in a way that produces answers. Then deliver those answers. You get the picture.