June, 2011

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29
Jun 11

Dather On The Warped Tour!

We’re thrilled to be powering the social media event marketing for two great causes on the Vans Warped Tour: John Lennon Educational Tour and Feed Our Children Now. Dather is integrated into each of their sites and will house all of their social media from the tour and will used to build communities from each of the tour stops. Dather once again is building online value from offline events.

John Lennon Educational Tour is a non-profit mobile recording studio dedicated to providing students free hands-on experience to create music and video. Here is a teaser video they created to introduce Dather to their audience.  More to come on this initiative!

Feed Our Children Now distributes food locally to non-profit charities that serve children of need at no cost.  They have YouTube star Naughty Nate on tour with them.  You can see him rave about Dather at the end of this video.

Two great charities on an incredible summer tour.  Dather is proud to be able to support  them both!

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17
Jun 11

Dather Graduates from Founder Institute

So the big news this week is that Dather graduated from the Founder Institute!  FI is an intensive 14 week program for entrepreneurs where highly successful local Mentors teach a curriculum focused on successfully launching start ups. There were 55 in the program at the start and 15 ended up graduating. It was not for the faint of heart!

This program was hugely beneficial to Dather as we were pivoting our business right when it started. The Mentors were very helpful and in particular we found Joey Tamer, Oded Noy, Travis Schmidt, Dale Fox, Richard Gibbs, Peter Sorenson and Brian Deagon to be particularly  great for us. The other large benefit were the connections to the other Founders who we look forward to remaining in contact with and supporting as we each move forward with our businesses. All in all, a valuable experience.  Now on to building on the great momentum we’ve started.

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6
Jun 11

Social Media Roundup

I’ve come across several blog posts recently and although they seem all over the map, they are all social media related in one way or another. So I thought I’d do a quick recap on a few of them.

  • Here’s a piece on ESPN.com about the UFC and social media. Really cool to see how much they are using Twitter and FB, etc: http://dat.hr/lDmHag
  • Another post is from a guest writer on Huffington Post, who is also a school principal, about how he’s using social media in his school. I know back in high school I could have benefited from a tweet showing up on my phone warning me that the campus cop was near: http://dat.hr/jqf2jd
  • And here’s one about how Dems are using social media to keep their constituents up to date on redistricting reform: http://dat.hr/kSejl5
  • Lady Gaga and Starbuck’s have teamed up recently, and it’s cool to see the partnership, but hopefully in the future they’ll come up with something bigger than an online scavenger hunt: http://dat.hr/lLoSM1
  • ShowHopping is a site that mashes up LastFM data and Google Maps to let you know when bands are coming to your area. Would be cool if there were pics and reviews and setlists from previous shows on the tour so you could do a little research and decide if you should show up for the opening act: http://dat.hr/kuAhgQ
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5
Jun 11

Live Event Engagement Using Social Media

Sponsors and organizers of live events have captive audiences for several hours. During these events hundreds or thousands of photos, tweets, videos, and status updates are generated but are dispersed throughout the Internet. The brands do not participate and in fact completely lose contact with all of the attendees who just had a great time together. And the attendees don’t have a unified place to share their experience. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Marketers are starting to understand that there are ways to increase the value of their live event marketing spend by leveraging the tools provided by social media. The campaign Nike ran in Indonesia to leverage their sponsorship of soccer matches is a good example of this. When you see innovative companies like GetGlue increasing engagement around TV viewing you realize that the surface has barely been scratched when it comes to live event engagement.

An excellent post on how social media improves sporting events highlights some examples of what is being done today to increase fan engagement. However, there is so much more possible as these engagements are fleeting and scattered. What is needed is a central hub for all the social media activities where all of the participants and fans can build a community and have a meaningful dialogue that can be referenced back to easily over time.

There is a lot of innovation going on in the live event space and leading the way are those in the ticketing sector. Eventbrite and Ticketfly are using social media to create a legitimate threat to the 800-pound gorilla known as Ticketmaster. Both of these companies have excelled at making the pre-event experience a great one for all involved. Some social media marketing campaigns are beginning to happen during events. And there has been no focus on post-event engagement. What a missed opportunity.