Biz Stone Keynote

Growing Your Brand on Twitter: Strategies and Tactics from the Trenches

Creating a Twitter account is only the first step in creating a strong brand presence on Twitter. Ongoing communication with members of your community and building personal relationships takes time, effort, and intelligence; the wrong attitude or the wrong internal structure can hamper your efforts from the beginning. This panel of brand experts will share their successful strategies for building a strong following on Twitter for both individuals and businesses.

How Twitter integrates into a larger social branding strategy * Identifying brand influencers * Being personal vs being commercial * Building a growth strategy * Who tweets for you? * Do you have one company account or multiple accounts?

Media Integration Strategies: Incorporating Twitter Into Your Existing Properties

It’s no secret that mainstream media has jumped on the Twitter bandwagon in a big way — but how many are really tapping into the full potential of the platform? Taking questions from viewers or displaying comments in a ticker is a good start, but it barely scratches the surface of what Twitter has to offer publishers and broadcasters. Those who have fully embraced the platform have been able to exponentially improve their understanding of what resonates with their audience while generating buzz, traffic, and content at the same time. In this session, producers and content programmers will discuss how they’ve fully immersed their sites and shows into the Twitosphere and reaped big rewards in the process.

Favored tools and techniques for monitoring and interacting with your audience * Content generation: how tweets become features * Detecting and acting on trends * Cross-platform automation techniques * Rolling up and filtering of multiple Twitter sources and searches * Polls and contests

Panelists: Tucker Max, Loni Love, Chris Hardwick, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Moderator: Jason Preston
Twitter is fertile ground for laughter. Comedians are flocking to the platform as a way to test material, build fan bases, and entertain the world. Learn how Twitter is helping this panel of top comedians create new jokes and draw crowds, and how humor can be an effective tool in the arsenal of short communication.

Building an audience by being funny * How comedy in 140 characters is different * Using Twitter to help your comedy career

Social Gaming: Monetization and Brand Building via Twitter

Developers have discovered that Twitter provides a fertile environment for games, contests, quizzes and other competitive or recreational activities. Games like Spymaster have stellar engagement numbers and prove that the monetization of gaming Twitter is not only possible, but profitable. This session will talk about why the Twitter platform is well-suited to gaming and how organizations can take advantage of Twitter’s social platform to assist them in their promotional (and revenue-driving) efforts.

Using games to drive followership * Driving revenue with virtual currency and in-game economies * Ad strategies * How to integrate branded content * What makes a game go viral * Approaches toward licensing * Twitter-specific platform considerations.

The Music Panel: Lessons from Engaged Artists

While MySpace may be the 800 pound gorilla of the social music space, Twitter is quickly emerging as an essential online platform for cultivating strong active fanbases. In this session, musicians who have reaped rewards from a Twitter-focused strategy will share how they connect with their fans, how it can drive sales, and how these strategies and tactics can apply to other realms.

Communicating with a large fan base * Using Twitter to go big * Converting twitter followers to paying customers

Twitter and Celebrity: A Match Made in Heaven?

While Geeks and silicon valley-centric early adopters initially dominated the Twitter ecosystem, the collective voice has experienced a seismic shift toward a more celebrity/hollywood-centric tone. When scores of movie stars can individually generate followership numbering at the million plus level, an analysis of their online influence demands consideration. Dr. Drew Pinsky coauthored the first systematic, empirical study of celebrity personality and has written extensively about modern America’s celebrity media culture. In addition, he has his own following of a million-plus Twitter fans. In this session, Pinsky will moderate a discussion among fellow Twitter “superstars” that will attempt to answer the following questions:

* Why do celebrities flock to Twitter, and why are so many people interested in what they had for breakfast?

* What are the more effective tools and techniques that celebrities use to maintain and grow their Twitter presence?

* Monitoring and responding to relevant comments and messages — how does one stay on top of it all?

* For the (non-famous!) marketing and PR professional, what useful lessons can be extracted from the celebrity experience?

* What monetization lessons are there? Are any celebrities converting their Twitter influence into direct revenue? If so — how, and can it be emulated by non-celebrities?

* Are “ghost” (staff) Tweets legitimate? What are the long-term ramifications of not authoring your own posts?

* Dealing with impostors: Are verified accounts the solution?

The Official 140tc Tweetup

When: 5:30-7:30pm, Tuesday, September 22nd.
Where: The Taper Courtyard at the Skirball.

Music by: Hypnogaja