One of the things that I find amazing about social media for meeting and event planners (marketers) is that our very attendees can be our biggest army of marketing foot-soldiers. When your event is an amazing success, they will talk about it, they will share it and they will let everyone know.
This has changed the event marketing landscape for the better and has made our jobs as event marketers 1000 times easier.
One of the ways that your attendees love to share their experiences is through Twitter, they tweet, and others retweet and that amazing testimonial rages across the internet like a nuclear bomb in a gas factory but in much the same way, those Twitter testimonials tend to flame out fast.
The Twitter medium does not lend itself to longevity because it is designed that way, Twitter is a raging stream, a river of data that flows over the waterfall never to be seen again. Even though this is the design, you do not need to lose the mojo that these compliments and testimonials provide. You can grab them and show them to the world as easy as pie (Pun intended).
Capturing A Tweet for Your Website
It used to be that if you wanted to capture a tweet, most of us would take a screenshot of the Tweet, do a little edit job, resize the image, upload that image to your website and them insert it into a page or a post. Yuck, this is messy, inefficient and time consuming.
There is an easier a way… if your meeting or event website is using the WordPress platform.
A Big Slice of Blackbird Pie
Blackbird Pie is an extremely useful plugin for event marketers because it allows you to grab a tweet and insert it into your post with little muss and no fuss. Basically, Blackbird Pie allows you to add embedded HTML representations of tweets in your site using simple shortcodes that the plugin inserts on its own.
Here are some of the features:
- TinyMCE editor button to easily search and embed a tweet
- A tweet URL on its own line will be converted to a “pie”
- Now tweets looks pretty in RSS readers!
- Exact same look and feel as the respective Twitter profile.
- Allows for multiple “pies” in a single post.
- Uses the Twitter profile text color.
- Uses the Twitter profile link color.
- Dates are displayed like on Twitter i.e. “real time” date-time of when the tweet was tweeted.
- Auto-linking of URLs, hashtags, usernames within the tweet text.
For a full rundown on the plugins features, you can visit the developers site for more information.
Cost
OK you SAY! These are some great freaking features. It must cost a fortune! Well, cool your jets there Uncle Pennywise, the plugin is free.
Ease of Use
Let’s have a look at a couple of real world examples, I will go into detail on how to use the plugin below.
Here are a couple of Tweets that I came across this morning and embedded into this post in about 10 seconds.
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/JeffHurt/statuses/161532466476224512″]
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/HSMAIMEET/statuses/161528821034663937″]
So, How do You Use Blackbird Pie
The first thing you need to do is install Blackbird Pie to WordPress (if you are using the WordPress platform, you should know how to do this, if not, shoot me an email).
Once it is installed, you sit back and wait for a Tweet that you really want to put in a post…… days pass by, now a week and you have forgotten your excitement of installing the plugin…. UNTIL!!!!!!!!
BAM, the most amazing testimonial pops up on Twitter! It is amazing and it rocks so much that you fall over backwards in your amazing chair and knock yourself out cold. You are so out that you have to be brought back around by that weird little guy from accounting.
You come to, spring to your feet, knowing that you must act now to capture all of that amazing event lovin before it is gone forever.
You open up a browser, launch your WordPress dashboard and get to work!
First, you write the most amazing post about the testimonial because it was from the most amazing person in your amazing industry and this is the most amazing day and holy crap, everyone is going to be amazed!
You find the spot in the post where you want to insert the Tweet and you click the little blackbird.
Up Pops the little box and you insert the Tweet URL. (You can insert the Tweet in three ways, via the Tweet URL, the Tweet ID or by Searching. For this post, you are using the Tweet URL because it is easy).
You click insert, the plugin inserts the shortcode, you do a quick preview to make sure that it looks awesome and you hit publish and before you know it, the New York Times is calling to put you on the front freaking page because that Tweet was simply stupendous! How did the world exist before this one little Tweet and you have shared it with the world.
A happy ending! But WAIT…. How in the hell do you find a Tweets URL?
You see the Tweet, you must capture the URL!
- Locate the Tweet in Your Timeline (or someone’s timeline)
- Click on the details stamp
- This will open up the individual tweet
- Copy that URL from the Address bar
There you have it, one Plugin that got your event on the cover of the New York Times, you were promoted to Chief Marketing Officer and you were able to fire your old boss.
Life couldn’t be better.
Pie Image: docentjoyce
