Past Meetings

By Shannon Wermes 

Flush from the successful 2010 Tucson Festival of Books in March, professionals responsible for marketing the event talked about their strategies before IABC/Tucson members and other business communicators. 

Some 80,000 book lovers gathered on the University of Arizona mall to attend the free regional public celebration of reading and literacy, compared to 50,000 last year.  

The dynamic, results-oriented marketing team from the Caliber Group, Tucson Newspapers, StarNet and the Reading Seed gathered with moderator Daphne Gilman, director of strategic alliances at the BIO5 Institute, to provide tips gleaned from their online marketing efforts and management of volunteer and professional workers. 

Kerry Stratford of Caliber Group noted the impressive year-over-year growth of social media participation. The festival ended with 1,292 followers on Twitter and 1,724 fans on Facebook. 

Twitter Tips 

• Set up your Twitter account with a specific explanation of what you do.
• Provide a link back to your website.
• When tweeting, make heavy use of hash tags. Words or phrases prefixed with a hash symbol (#tfob) allow a person to search for the “hashed” term and get a list of related tweets.
• Follow people who are following you so their followers also will see your tweets.
• Decide whether to tweet under a professional title or your actual name (“Star editor” or “John”). If you leave your position, will you want to take your followers with you?
• Tweet before, during and after your event to keep followers involved.
  

Facebook Tips 

• Post updates and fresh content frequently. They will stand out with your fans and keep them coming back.
• One advantage over Twitter is that Facebook can be a portal for videos.
• Create a Facebook application in which snippets of code can be embedded in a fan page. This creates spaces that can allow the user to take a poll, play a short game or participate in other interactive ways.
• A great way to add value to a fan page is to offer users an incentive to become fans, such as contests.

Other Online Ideas 

• Communicate with attendees after the event with an online follow-up survey using sites such as Surveymonkey.com.
• Additional social media information can be found at Mashable.com.

Rob Wisner of the Arizona Daily Star created an iPhone application that allowed the festival to communicate real-time news, parking information, time and location of events and authors, and lists of their sponsors.  

Because programming is a very involved process, he recommended examining how much time you’re willing to commit to creating and maintaining an application.   

Handling large events 

Darrell Durham, director of market development for Tucson Newspapers, offered suggestions for handling a large-scale event. 

• Generate teams of people passionate in their area of expertise to enthusiastically drive the process.
• Create greater accountability and effectiveness by organizing sub-committees.
• Be very specific when assigning projects.
• Maintain constant communication throughout the process by setting up a structure where all communication takes place.

“An important aspect to running such a large event is the use of a project manager tool,” advised Elizabeth Campbell, executive director of the Reading Seed. “Having no central place for materials to coordinate between the groups and volunteers was a huge disadvantage.” She suggested using programs such as Google Docs or Basecamphq.com.  

“Most importantly,” said John Bolton, online editor for Arizona Daily Star, “think big. Have big ideas. Keep people inspired.” 

 “We’re looking forward to the challenge of the 2011 Tucson Festival of Books,” said Stratford, “and utilizing the insight we’ve gained this year.” 

Find Tucson Festival of Books online at www.tucsonfestivalofbooks.com, on Twitter at twitter.com/TFOB, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tucsonfestivalofbooks?ref=mf. 

Shannon Wermes is a BIO5 Institute events assistant and a senior molecular biology and chemistry major at the University of Arizona.