Upcoming parties and networking events in London: @twestivaluk, @measurementcamp, @overheardatmoo

In the coming weeks there are quite a few events on the social (media?) calendar that are worth giving a shout out to.  I’m going to do my best to get to as many as possible. See you there?

Twestival Local

• Date: Thursday 10 September 2009
• Time: 7:00PM
• Location: Vinopolis, Stoney St, London Bridge, London
• Twitter: @twestivaluk
• Web: http://london.twestival.com/
• Tickets: Available  on Amiando, 1 for £15 or 2 for £20

Off the top: Twestival. An obvious choice for the Twitterati here, and I don’t know many people who aren’t going. If you haven’t yet got your tickets – buy them now! The London Twestival will be in support of ChildLine, ‘the UK’s free, 24-hour helpline for children in distress or danger.’ Every single penny goes there. There will be free drinks and great entertainment including music from The Hours. Massive shout out to the organisers who have again pulled off something truly global, and great.

Measurement Camp

• Date: Thursday 10 September 2009
• Time:  10am – 12 PM
• Location: Dare Digital, 13-14 Margaret St, London, W1W 8RN
• Twitter: @measurementcamp
• Web: http://measurementcamp.wikidot.com/events

The monthly open source movement for knowledge sharing and industry collaboration for social media types, from across the marcoms spectrum: Media, Ad, Digital, Social Media and PR agencies.

Tech PR Drinks

• Date: Wednesday 23 September
• Time:  From 6.30pm
• Location: The Savoy Tup, Savoy Street
• RSVP: Email Will Stugeon
• Web: http://sturgeonslaw.blogspot.com/2009/09/tech-prs-who-fancies-drink.html

The brainchild Will Sturgeon from Lewis  PR, it’s a meet up for ‘the great and the good of the UK tech PR industry’. Missed the last one, so looking forward to this one.

MOO’s 3rd Birthday Party

• Date: Tuesday 22 September
• Time: From 7:00 PM
• Location: The Queen of Hoxton, 1 Curtain Road, Shoreditch, EC2A 3JX
• Tickets:  Free
• Web: http://mooparty.eventbrite.com/

You can’t seem to go to any networking thing in this city without being slipped a Moo MiniCard, and the funky online printshop is celebrating 3 years in the business. Happy birthday Moo, love your cards.

[Cross posted on: hyperTEXT London]

Event: Measurement Camp London

On Thursday 6 August I popped along to another installment of Measurement Camp, hosted at We Are Social’s swank offices and facilitated by Will McInness.

Measurement Camp

There was a really great turnout, though not quite the 96 people who signed up on the events page. As ever, it was a diverse bunch with representation from Media, Ad, Digital, Social Media and PR agencies, as well as a few clients.

Beth Granter from the Good Agency took the stage again to share a campaign case study that she recently completely for the RSPCA. It needs to be said that she stepped up and pulled the presentation deck together only the day before, so her ‘hardcore measurement camper’ status is well deserved.

This particular campaign was all about getting people to sign an online petition in response to the Government’s public consultation on the welfare of racing greyhounds. They used a combination of blogger outreach, forum discussions, Twitter and Facebook ads to make that happen. The campaign looked pretty well thought out from its inception, and social media measurement wasn’t an afterthought, but rather it was built into the execution from the very beginning. Nice one.

This is what I took away:

• Facebook ads drove the most traffic – Facebook ads appeared to drive the most traffic to the petition by a healthy margin, no doubt due to the precise targeting and segmentation that can be achieved. I haven’t dabbled with Facebook ads much myself, but am increasingly curious as to how they might be employed as part of a PR-led online/social media campaign. (Or is that just cheating?)
• Twitter/blog/forum users were more engaged – Beth presented a slide showing the source of web traffic to the RSPCA site, and the approximate length of time each user group spent on the site. It seems that people who came to the petition via Twitter/forums/blogs spent the longest time on the site. I found this fascinating and I think you could persuasively conclude a few things:
  1. The audience who either chose to ‘follow’ the campaign on Twitter or read about it on a forum/blog they frequent, are likely to be the most interested in the subject matter and therefore engaged in the campaign.
  2. I think it’s also reasonable to assume that they were also the most likely to fill in the petition, hence all the time that was spent on the petition page of the website

So, to crudely summarise the online behaviour from the tactics above, Facebook ads will give you quantity, but social media ‘content’ will deliver quality engagement.

The Facebook ads seemed to be successful at providing a short burst of high volume activity (visits to the website), but this interaction may have been fleeting (less likely to fill in petition). By contrast, the Twitter/blog/forum audience was smaller, but probably the ‘right’ one and took the time to complete the task at hand.

Very cool indeed.

All in all, it was a good session as evidenced by some of the #measurementcamp comments flowing on Twitter during and after the event.

At the closing of the session Will unveiled to everyone the newly completed measurement camp brand and logo (above) to be licensed under creative commons ‘so you can bosh it on stuff’.  A move so simple and smart, it begs the question ‘why didn’t we do that earlier’?

I look forward to the next one.

Other links:

• Measurement Camp Wiki
• Measurement Camp on Twitter
• Beth Granter’s previous Measurement Camp case study for ‘Compassion in World Farming’
• One of mine – Text 100 and C&M IBM case study from May’s Measurement Camp