This Tuesday I attended a Community Managers meetup at the Meetup Headquarters in Soho. The meetup was created so that community builders (and other social media professionals) could connect and learn from each other.  The event last night was structured so that there was a presentation from several companies and then the organizers had us break out into groups to talk about how we are reaching out and engaging with our community. This is by far one of the most insightful (and fun) networking events I have attended within the industry. I was surrounded with influential members of the social media community who were very open to learning from each other and sharing their successes and failures. There were representatives from a variety of companies ranging from startups like How About We and Bizzy to big news organizations like NBC and ABC.  To view all the people who attended the event, check out this list that I put together using TweepML.

The two companies that presented at the event were NBC and How About We, a new dating site that puts a fresh spin on online dating.  They gave us some tips on how they have built (and continue to build) their online communities and what strategies are key to connecting in an authentic way.

Presentations:

1. NBC

Ryan Osborn, the Director of Social Media at NBC, opened up the conversation by telling the audience that all communities start internally and that everyone at your company needs to be on the same page before you push out a social media plan. Companies have to bring their editorial (or content producers) and marketing teams together to achieve ultimate success. Ryan also stressed that social media is about the people, not the technology and that you have to put the people in your community first to build meaningful relationships.

It is interesting to note that Ryan had brought the idea of social media integration to his bosses at The TODAY Show years before they actually agreed to move forward with it. Ryan started with a page for the TODAY show and eventually expanded to additional pages once NBC saw the success of that one page. Although it’s hard to realize when I am in a room filled with tech/social media enthusiasts, there are still many high level executives that don’t understand the point of social media. If you are working at a company and are having trouble getting the green light to integrate social media into your marketing platform, take a look at this post on 5 Tips to Convince Your Boss to Engage in Social Media. Ryan also said that he thinks followers as a metric is a joke. You can have just as big an impact with 10 followers. I tend to agree given that social media is about quality (and engagement) not quantity.

2. How About We..

Brian Schechter (Co-Founder) and Michelle Dozois (Community Manager) from How About We gave us some background information on the concept behind the social dating site. Instead of looking strictly at profiles, the site lets users post suggestions for dates and if you see a date that interests you then you can respond to that user. Each date suggestion starts with the tag line “How About We.” An example that Michelle says is a popular suggestion (that she has used herself) is “How About We…grab a famous Elvis sandwich at Peanut Butter & Co and then have a picnic in Washington Square Park.

Brian discussed user engagement and acquisition strategies.  One way they engage with their existing users is by providing date suggestions and creating partnerships with restaurants, movie theatres, etc. They partnered up with IFC Theatres for a screening of a french film and had How About We members “like” the idea in order to get tickets. The first X (I can’t remember the number) amount of people to “like” it would get tickets to the screening. Michelle told us that she expected it to reach the target “likes” within 2-3 days  but it hit the target amount within minutes. It’s proof that if you listen to your customers and give them what they want (fun dates in this case), the response will be positive.  

How About We also launched a contest for the best date and the winner would get 10 dates for free paid for by the company. They took this campaign to the streets with How About We posters positioned in front of date spots such as the Brooklyn Flea. The top ten finalists were then made aware that they were in the running and to win they had to get their friends and family to vote for them. The winner had one of the longest date suggestions I’ve ever seen that suggested a night cap at 3am. I hope she enjoys her date (which she hasn’t gone on yet). I’d have to really like the guy to hang out with him til 3am on a first date! This campaign increased awareness of the social dating site and got users engaged while voting for the winner.

**If you want to try out How About We, you can get a month FREE with this code: CMMeetup. (Thank you Brian and Michelle for letting me share this with my readers).

Breakout Discussions:

After the presentations we took a quick break before breaking out into groups to talk about the questions below. The groups didn’t get to answer all the questions but we touched on some key tips and tricks of engaging with your community and some of the tools you can use to do so.

CMMeetup Questions

Discussion Points:

• Use some free tools such as Hootsuite, Google Alerts and Hubspot grader to manage your brand and track your competition. Ex: You can use Hubspot’s Blog Grader to see how you are measuring up to your competition. Another cool tip: Add a + to the end of a bit.ly link to view the analytics for that link. This allows you to view all the analytics for competitor links if they use bit.ly.
• Offer incentives to your community: Giveaways, exclusive content, trivia questions. Ex: Julie Miller, editor of Seventeen Magazine, talked about how they made their @seventeenmag Twitter account private for one day where only followers would get the link to an exclusive photo of Justin Beiber.  
• Bring the Experience Offline: Use Meetups to engage with your community. Bringing the online experience offline is the future. Ex: Dave from Etsy said they do some thing called the “Love Bomb” where they take Twitter questions and write the answers on physical notes and then send it to the user by mail (they DM them asking for their mailing address).

**Best line of the night was made by Brian Smipson (@Bsimi), Director of Social Media for the Roger Smith Hotel (@RSHotel). He said “An audience will watch you die in a fight; a community will jump in to help you win it.” Lesson learned? – Build your community first and the audience will follow.

Here is a great video that was made by Loren Appin from Pixable with photos taken by Anthony Quintano to recap the CMMeetup. Appropriate music and captures the spirit of the event. If you aren’t familiar with Pixable, it is a great site which aggregates and prints photos from social-media sites like Facebook and Flickr

Thanks again to all the organizers ( Vadim Lavrusik, Lea Marino, Katy Zack, Zach Seward, Stacy Green) of the event for making it happen. Thank you to Andres Glusman and the team at Meetup HQ for hosting the event and giving us a tour of the office – love the nap room although I wonder how many people actually use it).  Looking forward to seeing you all again at the next meetup.