Monthly Archives: September 2009

Previously I wrote that Twitter Parties Are Stupid. Well, they don’t have to, and if you don’t think of them as a sales tool I suspect they’re just fine. Here are three ways to make your Twitter Party not suck.

1. Don’t have one. If you don’t have a twitter party it won’t suck. Plan some time to discuss a topic, or learn something new. If my only party invitation for the week is to a twitter party, I just might off myself.

2. If you must have a twitter party, allow the brand to host. I adore Jyl and #gno twitter parties are the only reason anyone would ever try one. Jyl saw a need, filled a void and then invited brands to join in. Why isn’t the brand at the party? If you’re crayola and you want Jyl’s audience (and trust me they do) why wouldn’t you be there? With every sponsored event I’ve been to in real life, a brand representative has been present. Is your twitter party hostess your brand representative? You’re doing what has the potential to be a very personal event, be there. Be personal, it’s social media, be social.

3. Do something with the hashtag. Hashtag.org is a fantastic place for marketers. It is not a destination for shoppers. I get that y’all want to show that you got something to “trend” but twitter is not a place where content lives on. Twitter is the phone company, once it’s said it’s out there and can be morphed, but it certainly isn’t crawled by the search engines (well Bing does have one cool thing..) so why would you work so hard to get everyone to say a brand name only to have it disappear with a *poof*. If you want a hashtag to have legs, add it other places. Have the participants post their favorite tweets on their own sites the following day, do something, make it last. Yes, I do have the answer to this problem, but I can’t give you everything for free, can I?

If you don’t know what a Twitter Party is, consider yourself lucky. Basically there’s a host(ess) and a topic and a brand. They pick a set period of time and everyone talks about the topic and the brand for an hour or gawd forbid two. Do not let anyone try and convince you it’s part of a larger marketing plan, it is not. Marketers did not come up with this, they just pay off unsuspecting women with small bits of cash so they’ll continue their unpaid evangelism.

It’s back to school night tonight and K-3 doesn’t have homework. Alexander is thrilled, and I don’t blame him.

Jane was telling me she loves her fifth Grade teacher because she, “deals in reality”. Reality means that you can check your math with a calculator (they exist in the real world), many tests will be open book (resources exist in the real world), and the fifth grade has homework tonight, because the reality of it is that kids don’t attend back to school night.

Yeah baby. We’ve got a teacher who gives kids work and has them understanding why they’ve got to do it. Jane’s happy, I’m happy, still Alexander is happiest.

Quiet time is almost over, I’ve got kids to play with.

Not a little bit stupid, but a lot.

They clog up the twitter stream, they alienate people, they make the participants look silly and desperate and they are gone as quickly as they begin.

Do something else please. No matter how many times I see #landsend I’m still not buying that shit.