The CMO's Guide to Tweetups

the power of specialized think ing Photo Credit: (NASA/Carla Cioffi)

 Driving Sales, Building Loyalty:
T w e e t u ps as a M ar k e ti n g T o o l
2009 was a tough year for the
media giants. Many stumbled;
some fell.
But in the midst of all the
uncertainty, a new one arose:
Twitter.
Twitter is an unusual sort of
colossus.
Rather than towering over your
company like all the mainstream me-
dia brands, Twitter surrounds it —
with thousands of individual voices
talking about you.
Whose voices are these? They're
your customers and investors.
They're your partners and analysts.
They're super-connected influencers
with voracious appetites for
information.
And they're waiting for you — or
your competition — to reach out and
invite them to a tweetup.
What’s a Tweetup?
A tweetup is a short-term
gathering of Twitter users. It can
be an in-person event, such as a
conference or seminar. It can be a
virtual event, as when fans of the TV
show “Lost” gather online during the
broadcast to share comments and
links to information.
Many companies, particularly
those in business-to-business
disciplines, are starting to use
tweetups as a part of their marketing
efforts to give their customers,
prospects, and category aficionados
a glimpse of the world that they care
deeply about, but never have access
to.
Tweeps (the people who attend
tweetups) are treated to factory
tours, educational presentations, and
Q&As with the company’s experts
and members of its management
team. Think of it as a briefing with purchasers:
people who have the distribution
capabilities of journalists — but the
bias of sports fans.
• 26% are Creators, who have
already established their own
social media channels.
Who are your Tweeps?
• 28% are Joiners, who are
Despite the stereotypes about members of social networking
users of social media, tweeps aren’t a groups like LinkedIn and
bunch of people who prefer to stare Facebook.
at their iPhones instead of talking
with other human beings. • 68% are Spectators who
Their most defining characteristic regularly read user-generated
is the ability to have a great conver- content on blogs and forums.
sation. They're interesting and inter-
ested. Their hyper-sharing online is
mirrored by hyper-sharing offline.
Interesting factoid:
And given the friendly nature of
social channels, there's much more According to the Pew
of a "we're all in this together" feel
than you would find at an industry
Internet & American
conference. Life Project survey,
Most important, tweeps aren’t a
bunch of isolated outliers who exist
28% of Twitter users
on the fringes of your business. own three mobile
devices, and 39%
They’re your customers or those
who influence them.
A 2009 Forrester Groundswell own four or more.
Study reports significant social
media usage among B2B technology
Photo Credit: (NASA/Carla Cioffi)
100 tweeps at NASA's launch of shuttle Atlantis

Does your company have
tweeps? Here are two quick
ways to find out.
Option 1: Go to WeFollow.
com. This site is a directory of
Twitter users who have picked five
words to describe who they are
and what they tweet about. Type
in keywords that describe your
sector. The number alongside these
terms shows how many people have
chosen that term as part of their
five-word identification.
Click on the term and a list of
twitterers will appear, ranked
by the number of followers they
have. Those are the pillars of your
community. They may not know
it yet. But now you do.
Option 2: You can also do
a search for keywords on search.
twitter.com. Look for people
with bios that match your target
audiences, who have mentioned
your company’s name, your
product names, those of your
competitors, and associated ticker
symbols. Search for terms that are
only used by people in your field;
the more obscure the term, the
more knowledgeable the person is
who’s using it.
Tweetups aren’t just
about Twitter.
Though the name makes it sound
like everyone will just be using
Twitter, tweeps bring a host of social
media tools to these events.
You should expect (and
encourage) people to live-blog,
record videos for YouTube, take
pictures for Flickr and record
interviews for podcasts.
By embracing these mediums,
CMOs will see their messages spread
much further, much faster and with
a great deal of credibility.
Why tweetups make
sense for B2B.
Ironically, companies in the B2B
sector have the most to gain from
tweetups, yet to date they have been
the most shy about deploying them.
A tweetup’s combination of
highly educated, highly skilled
people who have a deep interest
in a narrow subject and a desire to
share information with like-minded
people makes it an ideal vehicle for
business-to-business marketing.
Here are six reasons why:
1. Create visibility.
A tweetup generates a lot of
digital ink. If you have 20 tweeps in
a room, they may have a combined
readership that rivals your industry’s
biggest trade magazine once the
information fully spreads online.
Consider this: Take the number
of followers that each Twitter user
brings (virtually) into the room.
Multiply that by the number of
tweeps at the event. Multiply that
by the number of tweets, blog posts,
videos and other online entries the
tweeps will create. Now multiply
that by the number of re-tweets, re-
blogs and other sharing activity.
The hyper-targeted nature of
this visibility can’t be overstated.
If a thousand people are following
your tweetup online, it’s a fairly safe
bet that they’re a perfectly targeted
thousand. For a B2B company,
that’s worth more than the millions
of semi-well-targeted people that
mass media channels deliver.
2. Generate understanding.
Even before the Great Recession,
the mainstream media lacked the
means to cover every company’s
activities in the depth they deserve.
For tweetups, the economics are
radically different:
• Tweeps are highly interested in
subjects often too narrow for
mainstream media.
• Tweeps have unlimited space to
write tweets, blog posts, and create
video and audio content about your
company.
• Tweeps are often more
knowledgeable about your sector
than mainstream reporters, and
they care far less about what’s new
than what's interesting.
These mutually reinforcing factors
deliver coverage that is remarkably
deep and can build understanding
of your company in a way no other
medium can.
3. Stimulate sales.
Some of the best tweeps you can
invite to a tweetup come from your
customer ranks. They’re already
invested in your field and eager to
share their passion with others.
Far from being "virtual"
experiences, tweetups are all about
shaking hands, slapping backs and
being, well, social. A customer
who spends a day at your tweetup
will leave feeling more loyal to
your company and with a better
understanding of what it offers.
Granted, crossing the boundary
between marketing and sales may
be fraught with cultural difficulties.
But the fact is, your customers are
already covering your sector like the
media.
A straightforward way to resolve
potential conflicts is to treat
everyone at the tweetup like a
VIP, and have PR and Sales jointly
monitor a short list of tweeting
customers. It will quickly become
clear who needs to be made aware of
(or respond to) a customer’s tweet.
4. Attract investors.
If your company is publicly held,
consider inviting analysts who tweet
to your tweetup.
While there are strict regulations
and compliance issues that must
be observed, there’s a mountain
of information that’s safe for
companies to release to the
investment world, much of which
gets lost in product sheets and
background documents, but which is
interesting to this audience:
• Your culture of innovation
• The thinking that goes into your
products
• How safety is maintained
• Environmental and sustainability
issues
Tweeps love to explain how things
work, giving credit where it’s due
for complexity and breakthroughs.
Photo Credit: (NASA/Carla Cioffi)
Mike Massimino, first human to tweet
from space
Their coverage will be found by • Number of tweets
analysts and investors, educating • Number of people who received the
them in a way no other medium can. tweets
• Tweet tonality
5. Promote trust. • Content
• Number of new followers
The act of holding a tweetup
• Number of blog posts, videos,
is concrete proof that a company
podcasts, with respective sizes
is trying to be open, honest and
transparent. And in an age of audience, topic and tonality
where trust in corporations is at measurements
a low, replenishing goodwill and • Sales inquiries
humanizing management is critical. • Increased awareness among target
And should a crisis hit your audiences
company, the people who attended • Increased knowledge of key
your tweetup will be much more messages among target audiences
willing to listen to your side of
• Sentiment change among target
the story, communicate it to their
audiences (particularly in quality,
followers, and — depending on how
honest, good intentioned and simply trust, transparency, thought
human you came off during the leadership levels)
tweetup — come to your defense. • Sales leads
• Job applicants
6. Attract talent.
Despite the recession, the hunt is
always on for top talent, especially
for highly skilled technical workers.
Technologists love Twitter and
social media. They like learning new
things and “geeking out” with fellow
engineers and scientists. Tweetups
are a great way to share information
about the company’s culture.
Fitting tweetups into
your marketing strategy.
A tweetup isn’t just an event, it’s
a promise to a community that you
will listen, and keep information
lines open. A promise that you’re
lifting a perceived veil of secrecy. A
promise that you’re listening, as
well as speaking. A promise that
you’ll keep the information lines
open, feeding them more of what
they want.
In many ways, it’s just like any
other street-level promotion or grass
roots political event. But unlike those
familiar marketing tactics, a tweetup
has the ability to generate a number Photo Credit: (NASA/Carla Cioffi)
of success metrics.
• Tweeps in attendance Tweetup perks: goddies and glamor
 Organizing a Tweetup:
L e ss o n s fr o m a N A S A T w e e t u p
On November 15 and 16, 2009,
the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration held a tweetup
for the launch of the space shuttle
Atlantis.
One of Makovsky's social media
experts was one of only 100 tweeps
to attend. As a result, we had a first-
hand view of NASA’s impressive
planning and execution of the event.
This was NASA’s fifth tweetup and
it provides a textbook example of
best practices for such a event.
What follows is a list of the lessons
learned — some strategic, some tacti-
cal, some big-picture and some quite
granular — that you can use to de-
velop your own company’s tweetup.
1. Play by the culture’s rules.
The Twitter community, like any
other, has a set of cultural norms
and behavioral rules that you’ll need
to observe to be successful:
• Use Twitter for at least six months
to develop a following. NASA began
using Twitter in 2008 for its Mars/
Phoenix probe, using it to distrib-
ute information, answer questions,
re-tweet insightful commentary,
and encourage non-PR people, in
this case astronauts, to use Twitter
to directly communicate with the
public. When it was time to orga-
nize a tweetup, NASA had a steady
audience of dedicated followers.
• Establish common ground. The
people who led the event were
already on Twitter as individuals, a
factor that cannot be underestimat-
ed. When the tweeps arrived in the
presentation room, there was no
“us vs. them.” Instead, there was
only “us” — tweeps who worked for
NASA and tweeps who have other
jobs. Twitter wasn’t just a medium
of communication; it was a badge
of belonging.
• Employ a fair selection process.
NASA selected the 100 tweeps who
would have the privilege to par-
ticipate in the event by setting up
a website and letting the first 100
people to sign up “win.” The only
qualifier was that you already had
to be a follower of the @NASA Twit-
ter feed. Plenty of notice was given;
Ask NASA:
How has using social media
on a daily basis changed
your job?
“It’s changed it primarily in
how much time we spend on
a new medium. But it has
changed it in a more important
way. Which is we have direct
contact with people who have
a vested interest in the nation’s
space program. And that’s the
people that we’re trying to reach
anyway when we put out news
releases or have a news briefing
or whatever. The media is just
our medium to get the word out.
So with social media we get the
word out directly to the people
who are interested and I think
that’s awesome.”
Stephanie Schierholz
NASA PR
Watch the full interview at:
http://bit.ly/NASA-PR-interview
no one could complain that they
had been left out for not being a
booster or having too few followers.
• Recognize that the value of a
tweetup to participants isn’t just
the information they receive; it’s
the interaction. NASA gave par-
ticipants the space and time to talk
with each other, hang out, learn
and enjoy. Don’t fill every minute
with your content – allow time for
mingling.
• Give tweeps a head start. Before
beginning the event, organizers
gave the tweeps a full hour to settle
in, plug in, boot up, and otherwise
get their geek on.
• A tweetup isn’t a press conference.
Because they're citizen journalists,
tweeps need to be treated differ-
ently from reporters, analysts and
others. That doesn’t mean Twitter
users shouldn’t be invited to other
kinds of events; just don’t call
them tweetups.
2. Cultivate the new community.
Some of the people in the room
at NASA knew each other before the
tweetup. Others got to know each
other in the weeks running up to
the event.
But once the event started, the
100 people in attendance started to
experience things as a group, and
therefore become a community.
• Establish a separate Twitter
feed for the event. NASA cre-
ated a separate @NASAtweetup
feed which streamlined their
communications to attendees and
freed up the @NASA primary feed
 for wider communication with the
public. Interestingly, since this was
NASA’s fifth tweetup, and they’ve
used the @NASAtweetup account
on a rolling basis, the newest
tweeps were able to reference the
comments of the previous ones.
• Designate a hashtag. NASA
chose #nasatweetup before a com-
munity member could, picking the
shortest and least used hash for
their own use.
• Provide a tweep directory.
Using Twitter’s new list-building
feature, NASA built a list of the 100
tweeps that everyone could access
and share. At the event, NASA
handed each person a printout with
people’s @names listed.
Ask NASA:
What tips would you
have for people trying to
coordinate a tweetup?
“…you have to be able to
react quickly…things are
happening in real time. If
you don’t respond in that
moment, it’s lost.”
Stephanie Schierholz
NASA PR
• Use round tables. At the first
day’s session we sat at small round
tables that made conversation and
community building easy. This
contrasted with the next day’s
event which was set up like a press
conference; long rows of tables
facing a single podium. The first
day’s setup was the model of social
media, the next day’s exemplified
the traditional media model. A
NASA PR pro later shared that
their next tweetup will feature only
round tables.
• Hold an ice breaker. Given
that everyone was there for the
same reason, and many people had
already gotten to know each other
virtually in the weeks running up
to the event, there was a higher
degree of camaraderie and trust
than you see at other events. Still,
to break the ice, NASA put "space
gadgets" in the middle of each table
and asked people to figure out what
they were. It got people talking
with each other and was one of the
earliest shared experiences.
• Use big screens with
integrated feeds. Large screens,
showing all the tweets using
#NASAtweetup posted in real
time, have become standard at
Tweetups, but it’s a tactic never to
be overlooked.
• Create a group “artifact.”
NASA procured the wheel of a
shuttle that had been to space and
placed it outside the twent (Twitter
“media tent”) for everyone to sign.
It was yet another way to make
the moment feel special and bring
people together.
• Be open about glitches. At
least twice, NASA’s PR staff asked
everyone in the middle of the event
if anyone was having problems
with wifi. Several hands went
up. Just imagine the frustration
that builds if you’ve arrived for a
tweetup and can’t tweet! NASA
won a lot of people’s hearts in that
moment, and you can do the same
with your tweeps.
• Post signs galore. There were
professionally printed signs
everywhere: at the signup area, on
the buses, outside the “twent”… It
made everyone feel special and that
NASA took us seriously.
• Drip, drip flair. At nearly every
transition point, such as when
people got back on the buses after
a session, people found NASA
informational materials on their
seats. It gave strangers who hadn’t
talked yet something to speak Photo Credit: (NASA/Carla Cioffi)
about and smile at together. A
small but important touch. Logistics: the hidden hero of any launch
• Provide special access. At
several points, tweetup attendees
were given special access to sites,
such as a field across from the
shuttle launch pad that is normally
closed off from the public. They
weren’t shy about saying how much
the tours usually cost, or how rare
access to a certain site is, making
us feel privileged and special.
3. Match the content to
the medium.
Here are some tips:
• Manage the stream. There
was a steady flow of information,
comprised of short presentations
on a wide variety of topics. This
enabled tweeters to switch back
and forth between listening to
presenters who interested them,
and participants sitting next
to them.
• Speak to wide variety of
topics. Some topics made the
engineers swoon; others were
meant for the humanities majors.
• Feature interesting people
telling interesting stories.
Chief among these was Mike
Massimino, who has flown two
missions to space and was the
first astronaut to tweet from space
(he has more than one million
followers; more than @NASA).
• Provide things to touch.
Tweeps were given objects to
touch and photograph and take
videos of, like the shuttle tiles
that contributed to the breakup of
Columbia. Feeling the heat shield
tiles crack under light pressure
of fingertips made the danger of
spaceflight more understandable.
• Employ professional multi-
media. Sure, tweeps celebrate the
democratization of media. But that
doesn’t mean they won’t value or
use a professionally created photo
or video. NASA had a professional
photographer and videographer on
hand, capturing content that could
be re-tweeted, re-blogged and
otherwise distributed through each
person’s social channels.
• Provide public domain ma-
terials. NASA provided pictures
and videos that were explicitly in
the public domain. The last thing
a tweetup organizer wants is for
people to hold back on posting
because they’re afraid of violating
intellectual property rights.
• Schedule with Twitter traffic
levels in mind. If you’re
looking to have a substantial
virtual audience, take care with
the date and time you hold your
tweetup. NASA held the first part
of their Tweetup early on a Sunday
morning, a time when traffic is
at its lowest. This made it easier
for #NASAtweetup to get onto the
“trending topics” list (a running list
of tags posted on Twitter.com that
shows which topics are being cited
most frequently), which in turn
attracted a wider audience.
• Purposefully incite tweets.
As if all the previous techniques
weren’t enough, NASA specifically
incited tweets at certain points. For
example, speakers steadily rolled
out educational factoids, such as
80 percent of shuttle flights take
off on time.
• Ask people to speak in 140
characters. Right after launch,
one of the NASA people asked
everyone to verbally express
what they saw in 140 characters,
instigating poetic descriptions
that, in terms of brevity, put haikus
to shame. The ship had already
launched a thousand tweets; this
request set off a few more.
• Ply the crowd with trivia
games and prizes. Throughout
the two-day tweetup, NASA’s PR
team continually engaged the
group with trivia questions and
Ask the Journalist:
How has social media
changed the journalist’s
approach?
“…What we discovered very quick-
ly is if...a few tweets to the right
people, you're going to find the
right audience very quickly. That's
the beauty of social networking.
This exponential nature of friends
telling friends. That if you get to
the right group, if you can get to
the choir, the choir knows in-
stantly, and then the beauty of it is
the choir has friends too and they
start bringing other people into
the tent.”
"There's an audience out there that
really wants to bore in on a sub-
ject, an inch wide, 500 miles deep,
right? And that's what you can't do
in mainstream media."
“…You form these virtual commu-
nities that are actually taking the
place of editors at CNN. Actually
sifting through the information
and helping people understand
what's good what's not, what's
true, what's not. And so it's kind
of like an editorial board of the
commons, and it works. And there
is so much expertise out there
that hasn't been [tapped]...and
frankly, a lot of what you saw in
mainstream media was just a few
little people who were in your
rolodex and were frequently put
on television. And they were —
that was deemed to be the expert.
There's a lot more to the world,
a lot of expert opinion out there
that was never touched by main-
stream media.”
Miles O’Brien, formerly of CNN
Watch the full interview at:
http://bit.ly/miles-obrien-interview
 prizes. It’s important to note that
the prizes weren’t valuable in and
of themselves. (they were mostly
from the tweetup). It was the
opportunity for recognition that
people enjoyed.
4. Rock the logistics.
There is one Commandment that
must always be observed: Thou shalt
not underestimate the amount of
wifi, cell signal and tech support that
will be needed at thy tweetup.
• Provide power. Have power
strips in the middle of the table.
Count at least four plugs for
every person in order to satisfy
numerous devices, some of which
have plugs that will take up
two sockets.
• Supply login info. Send the
ID and password to the attendees
days — if not weeks — ahead of
the tweetup. NASA did this and
it saved everyone a lot of time
and headaches.
• Have IT support standing by.
Have tech people on hand to help
out with troubleshooting. Macs
are popular at these events, so
have people who know both
major systems.
• Ask about problems. Once an
hour, ask the crowd if anyone’s
having tech problems, and have
them raise their hands so they can
be helped.
• Use multiple forms of
communication. Include a
dedicated twitter feed, email and
even good old-fashioned phone
numbers.
• Print the schedule and keep to
the schedule. Set expectations
from the beginning that everything
will start and end on time. Remem-
ber, unlike most frustrated crowds,
everyone in attendance is on Twit-
ter and will be eager to use it to
vent their frustrations.

The 100 tweeps' gift to NASA PR for opening up, educating and entertaining

Use of NASA images, images and quotes of people cited in this white paper do not constitute
an implied endorsement of Makovsky + Company.
Makovsky + Company's Social Media Services

Audits & Monitoring

Social Media Audit
Similar to a traditional media audit, Makovsky’s Social Media Audits examine a company's
visibility in channels such as blogs, YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn and Facebook in order to as-
sess the company’s reputation online. The report also serves as a benchmark against which
to measure the effectiveness of reputation building programs.

Social Media Monitoring

On a daily basis, Makovsky tracks what is being said about a company and its industry
in social media, providing clients with rich, real-time intelligence on what its clients and
prospects are concerned about. During crisis situations monitoring is done on a 24-hour
basis to give management the best insights possible to aid decision making.

Social Outreach
Policy Development
Though most companies have "online policies," they often don't address social media.
Makovsky works with companies to create customized policies that fit their culture, liability
risks and new business priorities.

Blogger Relations
Given the acceleration of journalist layoffs over the last three years, and growth of Ameri-
cans who regularly read blogs, there's never been a greater need for companies to reach out
to their stakeholders through the blogosphere. Reports and studies are valued by bloggers,
though the tools traditionally used to disseminate them – press releases and pitch phone
calls—are not effective in generating coverage. Makovsky's social media R&D team has
developed new tools and techniques for working with bloggers that reach highly targeted
audiences, resulting in quantifiable buzz, increases in website traffic, and a direct, measur-
able link to sales.

Group Relations
Similar to its work in the blogosphere, Makovsky regularly conducts outreach to communi-
ties that have assembled online. While online groups focus on a diverse variety of topics,
their members are uniformly enthusiastic about spreading information. As such, they are
key influencers on- and off-line, and critical audiences for companies to reach. Makovsky is
steeped in the etiquette and cultural nuances of these groups, and applies that expertise on
behalf of companies to aid their sales, reputational and staff recruitment goals.

Message Magnification
Featuring a technique invented by a Makovsky executive and unveiled at the 2006 Bull-
dog Media Relations Conference, the firm uses "messagewords" to enable press releases,
speeches, articles to appear in response to keywords in searches, blog posts, email content
and online mainstream media articles. Messagewords are a powerful PR tool that can be
used to deliver sales and change stakeholder behaviors, and are particularly effective when
the content involved is complex and meant for sophisticated audiences.
Executive Positioning
Image Unification
The growth of social media and the proliferation of websites that compile profiles of people
without their permission have led to the fracturing of executives' images. The resulting
confusion on behalf of customers and investors seeking information undermines a compa-
ny's reputation. To lower these risks, Makovsky engages its proprietary "image unification"
measures to create a single identity that key audiences can find no matter where they look.

Online Executive Positioning

Executive Positioning programs typically build a leader's reputation through visibility in
the media and speaking at conferences. But the rise of social media means that a person's
image is often perceived to be whatever comes first in a search engine. To close this gap,
Makovsky first plays "defense," seeking out and mitigating potentially negative informa-
tion about an executive online, and then "offense," magnifying the executive's positive
attributes through a variety of social media channels.

Social Properties
Social Media Channel Creation
The decline in numbers of traditional media, coupled with rising expectations of audi-
ences to receive detailed information direct from companies, has motivated an increasing
number of companies to run their own media channels. Deploying blogs, YouTube chan-
nels, Twitter feeds or other channels, Makovsky works with its clients to set up attractive
interfaces, set an editorial direction, write/develop content on a daily basis, and finally,
promote it to readers through traditional and social channels.

Social Media SWAT Team

While companies go to great lengths and expense to hold events, the intellectual content
developed at them usually disappears when the last guest leaves. Makovsky harnesses this
latent reputational asset and spreads the event’s content through blogs, Twitter feeds, and
online groups. The result? Higher attendance, quantifiable “buzz” during the event, and
reams of intelligence on the attendees to be used for sales or reputation-enhancing efforts.

Community Creation
Few actions can benefit a company's sales, reputation and customer service more than the
mobilizing of people into a new online community. Makovsky uses popular tools such as
LinkedIn groups, wikis and Ning to organize groups, and manages the day-to-day needs
of the community. These groups can be tapped for feedback on new ideas, products and
services, can become advocates for a public affairs goal, or, in some cases, become volun-
teer R&D or research resources, providing free—but very high quality—work in the name
of a joint goal.
Contact: David Rosen LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidhrosen
Group Vice President Twitter: @davidhrosen
Makovsky + Company

212.508.9690
drosen@makovsky.com
www.makovsky.com the power of specialized think ing