A Guide to Twitter Advanced Search for Event Planners

Twitter advanced search is an incredibly powerful tool to track real-time conversations about virtually anything on Twitter. Smart companies are monitoring when people are seeking recommendations for businesses like theirs and tracking when people are talking about their brands or their competitor’s. It’s very easy to find these conversations and takes minimal effort to review your search queries every morning before you start your day. Here’s how you do it…

1. Go to http://www.search.twitter.com.
2. Click on ‘Advanced Search’. (see image below)
3. Insert the parameters of your search. See below for ‘UNDERSTANDING TWITTER ADVANCED SEARCH FIELDS’. (see image below)
4. Click ‘Search’.
5. If you would like to perform this search on an ongoing basis, you don’t have to keep going back to Twitter to search. Instead, you can save your search parameters as an RSS (real simple syndication) feed. Simply click on ‘Feed for this query’ (see image below)
6. Cut & paste the feed URL in the address bar and import this RSS feed into mac mail, your RSS reader or anywhere else you track and manage your feeds. (see image below)

UNDERSTANDING TWITTER ADVANCED SEARCH FIELDS

WORDS:

• ‘All of these words’ means that the tweet must contain all of the words you list, but the words can appear in any order. For example, if you input event planning, it might turn up a result like: “Planning an event?” Or, if your company name is Great Event, it will likely turn up a number of non-related results like, “Wow! That event was great!”.
• ‘This exact phrase’ means that the tweet must contain all of the words you list in their exact order. Using one of the last examples, if you input event planning, it can only provide you with results that use the exact phrase: “event planning”.
• ‘Any of these words’ is usually a field you use in addition to the previous two. For example, if you input “event planning
• ‘None of these words’ is a great tool for keywords or keyphrases that hold dual meanings. For example, if you’re a tent rental company and you want to search for tweets mentioning your business field, you’ll likely return a good number of results that mention camping (since tents are often used for camping). So, in order to avoid this, you can include words like: ‘camping, outdoors, camp, campgrounds, forest’ to remove non-relevant results.
• ‘This hashtag’ is relevant if you want to narrow in on conversations that are using a particular hashtag. Hashtags look like this: #eventprofs. A pound symbol followed by a keyword. Since there are millions of conversations taking place online, hashtags are a great way to organize conversations around a specific topic, like: #weddings or around an event, like: #esideafactory, or a community, like: #eventprofs. If you’re a speaker that wants to find out what people have said about you at an event, you can search for your name in the ‘This exact phrase’ field and add the hashtag for the event in the ‘This Hashtag’ field.
• ‘Written in’ is pretty straightforward. Simply select the language you’re searching within.

PEOPLE:

• ‘From this person’ would be where you would enter someone’s twitter handle to track what that particular person has said about your keyword or keyphrase. Let’s say you’re a florist that serves the event planning community and your objective is to provide help to key influencers looking for information on flowers. You’ve identified a small handful of influencers that serve your community. You might input their twitter handles (i.e. my twitter handle is @ready2spark <- so, in my case, you would remove the @ symbol and input ‘ready2spark’) in addition to entering some keywords / keyphrases into the ‘Words’ fields above. Now you’ll be notified when they mention your field so you can respond.
• ‘To this person’ might be a field you use if you’re tracking conversations to a competitor, for example. In the scenario above, maybe you want to track when the word flowers or florals are used (in the ‘Any of these words’) field to a competitor’s twitter handle.
• ‘Referencing this person’ might be a field you use if you’re tracking

PLACES:

• ‘Near this place’ is one of my favorite fields. If you serve a particular geographic area or you want to focus in on what people are saying within a geographic area, this is the field for you. For example, let’s say I want to track all conversations of people looking for an event planner within minneapolis, mn. I would simply enter Minneapolis, MN in this field, and…
• ‘Within this distance’ is where I would select the search radius around Minneapolis, MN. So, I could select within 100 miles to search for conversations from people who are tweeting within 100 miles from Minneapolis, MN.

DATES:

• If you want to narrow your search based on the date in which the tweet was published, you can enter a ‘Since this date’ and/or ‘Until this date’.

ATTITUDES:

• Attitudes refer to another commonly used term: Sentiment. Sentiment tracks whether someone is using positive, negative or neutral words in their tweet. So, for example, if you wanted to track specifically if someone is mentioning your brand in a negative manner, you could click on ‘With a negative attitude :(‘. This would turn up results from people who use negative words, like: “hate, bad, terrible, mad, angry”. This type of search is far from perfect. As we all know, many negative words are used to describe things that are actually positive (slang) – i.e. That event was bad / sick, but they really meant that it was great. There are many other nuances that affect the accuracy of sentiment ratings.
• ‘Asking a Question’ basically tracks if someone has used a question mark in their tweet. Again, this is not an exact science as you could turn up a tweet like: ‘Where should I go tonight? Oh, BTW, flowers suck.” This sentence included a question mark, but the question may not be relevant to flowers.

OTHER:

• ‘Containing links’ should be checked if you’re looking for tweets that include a link to click on, i.e.: “Check out this amazing event by Events Beautiful: http://www.xyz.com”.
• ‘Include Retweets’ should be checked if you want to include retweets in your search results. So, basically, instead of it just listing the original tweets, your search results will also include any time the original tweet was retweeted by someone else.
• ‘Results per page’ allows you to select how many search results you want to see per page.

Remember: People talk about things differently. Some may mis-spell your name, some may forget to use a hashtag, others may use a common short-form for your name. It’s often critical to do multiple searches based on all of these variables to ensure you’re capturing all conversations. Create the search queries once and import them into your RSS reader and you’ll never have to worry about performing the searches again.

 

Twitter Search Scenarios

SCENARIO 1 – EVENT PLANNING FIRM LOOKING TO TRACK WHEN PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR THEIR SERVICES WITHIN THE NY, NY AREA

Words

‘This exact phrase’: Event planner

‘Any of these words’: Looking for, recommend, does anyone know, who is

Places

‘Near this place’: New York, NY

‘Within this distance’: 100 miles

—

SCENARIO 2a – CONFERENCE PLANNER LOOKING TO FOLLOW CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THEIR EVENT (#EVENT101)

Words

‘This hashtag’: event101

SCENARIO 2b – SAME EVENT, BUT YOU WANT TO FOCUS ON F2F CONVERSATIONS ONLY

Words

‘This hashtag’: event101

Places

‘Near this place’: Tribeca, New York, NY

‘Within this distance’: 1 miles

–

SCENARIO 3 – FLORIST LOOKING TO TRACK NEGATIVE BRAND MENTIONS ABOUT THEIR COMPETITOR, XYZ FLOWERS

Words

‘This exact phrase’: XYZ Flowers

Attitudes

‘With negative attitude :(‘

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Tags: Social Media Marketing, twitter advanced search, twitter for business

I remember spending my summer weekends as a small girl looking forward to a specific sound. I would kneel on my couch in our living room overlooking the street, with my stomach against the back rest, head cupped in my hands, staring out the window, waiting… Waiting for that musical sound to come down the street. The ice cream truck.

No longer am I a kid. And no longer can I eat ice cream every day (as much as I’d love to). But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have anticipations. I have many.

Every day, when I log on to Facebook, I anticipate what my friends are talking about. But there’s one specific person that stands out from the rest. His witty and often quirky updates delight me. They put a smile on my face. They make me nod in agreement. They make me shake my head. I look forward to his posts. I seek them out.

I follow about 400 people on Twitter. While that might sound like a lot, it pales in comparison to the thousands many of my friends follow. What’s funny though is that there is a very small handful of people whose tweets I anticipate – probably less than 10. People who add value to my life with their updates.

In today’s age, there’s a lot of traffic and not a lot of ice cream trucks.

There’s no shortage of tweets, status updates, blog posts, invitations, articles and websites. In fact, you may feel bombarded and overwhelmed. In this huge pond of content, there are but a few individuals that talk about things that, for one reason or another, strike a chord with us. And even fewer who create enough consistency that we excitedly anticipate what they will say next. Today, there’s a lot of traffic, but not a lot of ice cream trucks.

Who’s your ice cream truck?

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Tags: content strategy, social media for events, Social Media Strategy

Blogger FAMs are not unheard of, but they are gaining ground – mainly due to limited sales & marketing budgets and the rise of online influencers. Recently I was contacted by Club Med Business to taste test their newly renovated Sandpiper Bay resort in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. I’ll be at the resort from April 6 – 10, 2011 along with 3 other bloggers and their partners (please see Disclosure statement below). I was intrigued by the thought of redefining the FAM so I recently spoke with Jacinda Lowry, Director – Groups & Incentive Travel Canada, to understand her thinking behind this initiative…

What is Club Med’s experience with FAMs to date?
Our FAM trips have been quite traditional; with travel agents and/or event planners invited to see our properties. Due to the realities of budgets, your invitees must be aggressively researched and targeted to best calculate and forecast a successful ROI.  The chosen participants must have a certain credibility within the market and the ability to influence others.  Although they have always been successful, the traditional FAM, in reality, has a limited reach.

So, what are you doing differently with the Club Med Sandpiper’s FAM trip.
We want to create the same experience of a traditional FAM, however with bloggers, who have the ability to share their experience with a larger audience. We have partnered with 4 bloggers total: 3 from Montreal (Brigitte Cardinal, Lyne Branchaud and Marie-Annick Boisvert) and 1 from Toronto. Club Med Business has an easy audience to define: direct and indirect event planners, and a number of these planners are located in French-Canada and the rest of Canada. Each of the bloggers chosen have an established credibility with those niche communities.

How will you know if you’ve been successful?
There are two main objectives: the first is to showcase Sandpiper Bay and the second is to create brand awareness of Club Med Business among the community of targeted event planners. With our strategy in place we are hoping to be able to leverage the event in a way that will have a larger impact with a wider audience of event planners then the traditional FAM.  Through the in-person and online experiences, we want to demonstrate the amenities, versatility and flexibility that we have for groups. Even though we have a long sales process, we are expecting an increase in inbound inquiries and requests for group proposals for our Club Med properties.

If all goes well, how would you love to see this evolve in the future?
I would love to see blogger FAMs become a natural part of our marketing campaign; that bloggers become one channel in our multi-channeled campaigns for both brand awareness and resort updates. If this experience has the ROI  required to justify a reproduction, it may evolve into a habitual event. Once a resort is newly renovated, or something major has been added we will organize a blogger FAM to get the word out to the community.

There may be some readers who are considering doing this for their own venues. What would you recommend to them?
It is our first, so I am sure that I will be able to better answer this question upon our return. However, I’d recommend that you ensure 2 things are sealed tight: 1) that you’ve chosen the right people to convey your message and 2) that you have a great story to tell. I am confident that our event is going to be a success because of the chosen bloggers and the program is lining up well. It is a program that will allow the bloggers to live and breathe the resort, while focused on the versatility that Club Med can offer for all types of group events.

So what do you think? Can a traditional FAM be successfully remodeled to include bloggers?

Jacinda Lowry is director for Club Med Business Canada; she is based out of their Montreal office.  Jacinda has recently jumped on board with Club Med, with a clear mandate to generate and augment Canadian groups.  Before joining Club Med, she worked 6 years for Cirque du Soleil, Marketing and Sales for Corporate and Groups – North America.

Disclaimer:  Club Med Business is paying for my return flight and transfers to the resort as well as my and 1 accompanying person’s lodging and meals for the duration of my stay. I have been asked to blog about my experiences. As per my disclosure statements, in no way am I being compensated for my opinion. I reserve the right to my opinion and will post my experiences accordingly.

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Tags: blogger fam, club med business, event planner fam, fam trip, sandpiper bay

Are you one of the many event planners who wonders what life was like before you iPad? I can’t tell you how many event planning conferences I go to and observe planners clutching their ipads as they hustle from session to session or use it to voraciously type their notes or communicate with their online friends. I am one of you.

The Event Planning Tools Megalist I posted last month was a big hit. So, I thought I’d share a handful of iPad apps that no event planner should live without. Here goes:

ORGANIZATION

• iDisk – I use MobileMe to easily share files across all of my devices. Yes, you can also do this through iTunes, but with MobileMe, I can access my files from anywhere (even if I don’t have my devices with me). I can also make certain files public for easy file sharing and don’t have to worry about storing large files. Take it to the cloud!
• Dropbox – For those who don’t have MobileMe (iDisk) <- I use this app a lot for large file transfers and have added this based on a number of reader comments :)
• ContactsP – Searching for contacts on your iPad is a bit of a challenge. ContactsP lets you easily search from any field in your contact list. You can also create lists of contacts and send emails to the entire list without having to add contacts one by one. It will also send you push notification when your contact celebrates their birthday or other momentous occasions. Huge time saver.
• Evernote – I use Evernote religiously to store great information I find around the web, create reminders for myself, record voice notes when I’m on the go from my iPhone, clip interesting quotes and data from articles, eBooks, etc. I often jokingly refer to Evernote as my brain. This great iPad app lets you view and add notes. This is a must for busy planners on the go.
• InformantHD – I’ve tried many different Calendar & To Do apps and this one is the most comprehensive in my opinion. It’ also won Best in Show at MacWorld 2011.
• iStorageHD – Lets you organize all of your documents into tabbed files (just like a filing cabinet). It also lets you access those files from anywhere.
• ACTPrinter – Ever wondered why you always end up printing those so-called electronic tickets, boarding passes, …? No more!Wasted a sheet of paper to remember that “will call” pickup number? Stop wasting paper! Maybe you just want to read documents on the go. ACTPrinter is a virtual printer that lets you ‘print’ documents to view later, when you don’t have wifi access.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

• MyPad – The best iPad app for viewing your Facebook accounts.
• Tweetdeck – Manage your twitter accounts from your iPad.
• Gist – Last year I spoke about Gist and raved about its ability to manage your social connections in one place for free! I have since gone to more comprehensive social CRM tools, but this is still a great, free option for many businesses.
• LinkedIn – Manage your LinkedIn profiles from your iPad.
• WordPress – Yes, you can even update your WordPress blog.
• Flipboard – A beautiful way of displaying content shared in your social networks. It looks just like a digital magazine, but your friends are the editors.

CUSTOMER SERVICE & ENGAGEMENT

• SignMyPad – Need to get a client’s sign off on a revision on site? You no longer have to worry about printing out a document & scanning it. SignMyPad lets your client sign a change order, contract or any other document right from your iPad.
• Chimpadeedoo – If you have a MailChimp account, you can use this app to grow your email database. CAN-SPAM regulations state that you can’t use emails from people who have not explicitly opted in to your mass communications. So, with this app you can create a beautiful email opt in page and let people enter their addresses directly at your event.

TALENT

• Aweditorium – Let’s you serendipitously find amazing indy artists. A wonderful time-passer and a great way to happen upon talent you might never have heard of.
• SoundHound – Hear a song and want to do more research on it? SoundHound is a music recognition tool that identifies the song and artist and includes a link to download the music from iTunes.

TRAVEL

• OpenTable – Book a reservation at a hot restaurant right from your iPad.
• AroundMe – If you’re traveling somewhere unfamiliar, this app uses your location to tell you what is around you (i.e. restaurants, gas stations, pharmacies, etc).
• Accuweather – A basic app to give you weather information when you travel.
• Weatherbug – Our business is often at the whim of the weather. This app lets you drill down on some amazing details including live camera shots within 100 miles from your area, “Find Me” lets you bypass entering your information to give you weather details based on your GPS location, you can even see cloud patterns to estimate incoming weather conditions.
• LogMeIn – Have you ever been somewhere and thought, “Oh no! I forgot to download that file!!”. I have and it really sucks. LogMeIn is an app that lets you log in remotely to your desktop computer from anywhere and control it from wherever you are. I’ve used it twice in an emergency. Definitely worthy of the price tag.
• TouchLCD – A great speaking alarm for the iPad.
• TripDeck / TripIt – Two great tools for sharing your travel schedule with your friends, finding out when & where your connections are traveling and storing your travel itinerary, tickets and confirmation numbers.
• Currency (XE) – Lets you do currency exchanges – super helpful when traveling.

READING / WATCHING

• iBooks – I use this app to store all of my eBooks and continued reading PDF documents. It also allows you to populate your books right from the iBookstore.
• TED – I love this app which lets you search from amazing TED talks and watch inspiring videos.
• GoodReader – A superfast PDF reader for your iPad. What I love about this app is that it also allows you to highlight and markup PDFs – want to write yourself notes, come back to a particular section of your document – now you can.
• TunIn Radio – Lets you listen and record radio stations from around the world.
• FLUD – This app aggregates amazing content from sources like Gizmodo, Fast Company and engadget in one visually inspiring interface.

COMMUNICATIONS

• NoteShelf – I’ve tried many note taking apps and I like this one the best because it has a hand guard (when you rest your palm on the screen, it doesn’t mess up your notes), you can write in different colors, highlight, import pictures, zoom in to your writing, and you can export your notes to Evernote or Dropbox! As a side, I highly recommend buying the Griffin Stylus for the iPad (I got mine from BestBuy) – it’s a lot better than using your fingertip.
• Dragon Dictation – A great voice recognition app that lets you dictate and it will convert to type. As with any voice recognition software, it’s not 100% perfect, but can be a great on-the-go solution for taking notes.

PLANNING

• Mark On Call – I love this app for space planning. It lets you create rooms, item checklists and include details like windows, doors, chairs and decor items simply.
• SuperPlanner – I wrote a review on this app a while back. It is an iPhone app, but also works on the iPad.
• My Measures – This tool lets you superimpose measurements directly on pictures (even more useful on the iPhone where you can take pictures).

PRESENTING

• Prompster – A great app for speakers that eliminates cue cards, flash cards & scripts.
• Prezi – An app that lets you control your prezi presentation from you iPad.

READER ADDITIONS

What tools can’t you live without?

Thank you to Carolyn Ray for inspiring this post.

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Tags: event planning, event planning app, event planning tools, ipad apps, ipad apps for event planners, News

I speak all of the time about the importance of telling stories in business and in events. Stories help to create intangible value, they break down complex ideas and most of what we store in our brains are attached to a story. We’re hardwired to not only tell stories, but to learn from them and retain them.

Event Planners are fantastic at creating a story at the live event…providing experiences that create lasting memories. But the story shouldn’t begin and end face to face.

Storify is a tool that lets event organizers collect tweets, Facebook updates, Flickr photos, Youtube videos, RSS feeds pre- during and post-event to build a lasting narrative around an event. Just take a look at this Storify page for HIMSS (Healthcare Information & Management Systems Society). In one story they included speaker presentations, event photos, attendee comments, behind the scenes videos, etc.

Take a look at this mini-story I pulled together from Event Solutions Idea Factory tweets and video:

 

Storify Features:

• Pull content from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, RSS or Google – it even lets you create custom links.
• In addition to pulling content, Storify lets you add text commentary and hyperlinks to contribute wider context.
• Edit your story even after it has been published (the embedded story will be updated everywhere that it’s seen online)
• When you pull other people’s tweets into your story, Storify allows you to notify them (encouraging further social sharing)
• You can publish your story easily to your blog or Mailchimp.
• You can easily encourage your attendees to create their own Storify pages for your event.

For more information, read Storify’s How to get the most out of your story.

How might you use Storify for your business / events?

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Tags: art of storytelling, Event Ideas, event planning

We spend countless hours lamenting over the stock we print our business cards one, what printer to buy for our office or which brand of water to stock our fridges with. And yet, many of us jump for joy the minute someone calls our office with a job. Why is it that we don’t place the same amount of scrutiny on the engine that keeps our businesses running? Our clients.

Just this week, during one of my Event Solutions Idea Factory sessions, I referred to this as being your company’s Red Velvet Rope Policy, a term first used by Michael Port in Book Yourself Solid. Today, any one of your customers can tweet, facebook status update, blog, create a video or rate and review your company. In fact, just today I came across a blog post about how the New York Times allowed a disgruntled business owner to rant on their blog about some PR agents he recently hired for a restaurant launch. And in one vinegary post, he may have destroyed the reputation of a firm and an entire profession for some who read it.

More and more of us are turning to online reviews and recommendations to help form their decisions about who to work with and who to stay away from. Recommendations from people we know is the #1 most trusted form of advertising. Recommendations from people we’ve never met before is the #2 most trusted form of advertising. We trust what strangers say about a business far more than we trust what a business has to say about themselves.

Work with enough people who don’t get you, don’t understand what you do or don’t care and you’re creating your own detraction engine.

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Tags: customer research, customer selection, News, Small Business Management