I just saw this and thought I should share with my fellow geeks..u know..future billionaires. Enjoy!
For many, Twitter is a way to read the news, network and keep up with friends and colleagues. But for event planners, Twitter is so much more. Their network on Twitter becomes a real resource when looking to find the perfect hotel, DJ, venue, cake master, etc. You name it, and someone on Twitter can probably help you find it.
Planning an event can sometimes take you anywhere, even if you are a small business owner like Stephanie Frazier Grimm, owner of Couture Parties in Newport, Rhode Island. Grimm plans everything from children’s birthday parties to weddings, and they aren’t always bound to America’s smallest state.
“I use Twitter to connect with friends in the industry. If I’m planning a destination wedding in California, I can reach out and find out who the best photographers are in the area.”
Likewise, Laura Parkinson also sees Twitter as a great help in both her current job planning internal
conferences and events at Apple, and at her former job planning events for SXSW. She uses Twitter in some pretty creative ways and says she thinks it has the potential to be so much more than a micro-blogging site.“You can use Twitter to take the temperature of an event, literally,” she says. “I actually had an instance where someone tweeted, using my hashtag, that the meeting room was ’super, super, cold. BRRRRR.’ So I tweeted back to him that I was sorry and had spoken to the facilities manager and the temperature was being adjusted. And he tweeted back, ‘wow, thank you!’”
Parkinson uses Twitter for organizational reasons, too. Conferences that she plans at Apple are often of a “very private and confidential” nature, so she uses Twitter lists to keep track of the people attending the conference to ensure they aren’t tweeting anything that violates their confidentiality agreement.
And it’s great for B2B, she says. “The Fairmont Hotel has a Twitter account, and they actually post specials, and I’ve been able get lower rates when the sales person on the phone has quoted me higher, because I’ll say, ‘I’m following you on Twitter, can you honor that price?’ And they say, ‘Yes, of course.’ ”
Twitter is a great untapped resource she says, and once people are more educated on how to leverage it, they’ll see the real value in using it.
And even if you aren’t planning huge events, you can still use Twitter to build your business and your reputation, says Mike Darlington, who plans all-ages events in Kitchener, Ontario.
“I use Twitter to build relationships with other companies. I was originally using Twitter very selfishly — I was only promoting my own events. But then I realized that by promoting other events in the city, by just giving shout outs to other companies, I was developing strong relationships with other businesses, which lead to them doing the same for me. And so my network has grown substantially from there.”
Twitter can be used to promote an event or keep things moving during an event. Jennifer Batchelor is the social media director at brpr Group in Miami, and has planned some amazing events that have integrated Twitter. Her firm threw a concert event with the musical stylings of R.K.M and Ken-Y for clients Smirnoff Ice and Univision Radio. Free passes were given to those who used Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and YouTuberegularly.
At the event, there was a Twitter Jockey, who live-tweeted pics and comments at the event, and would also tweet at people as they checked in on Foursquare — keeping the conversation going between the attendees, but also those who didn’t have access to the event itself....
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