Using Twitter to Start a Movement
I can still vividly remember the 3rd weekend in January of 2012 when the @BigIdeasEDU Twitter account (now @IdeaBlendEDU) went from 7 followers (our team & someone’s mom) to 700 followers. In the months following that weekend our account continued to grow, and today we have doubled that 700 number to over 1400 followers.
In January of 2012, a small group of colleagues and I had an idea to create a conference that would change the game in Higher Education. We had heart, hustle and Twitter account. Apparently, that’s all you need to start a movement. This story is about the substantial role that Twitter played in the Big Ideas in Higher Ed Conference and the movement it started.
It’s NOT about you (or your conference, or your brand, or..): Our account had one ground rule: the account is not about the conference, it’s about big ideas in higher education. We knew from the beginning that we wanted to be a source of big ideas and innovation in higher ed. People would figure out the account was on behalf of this cool conference, we didn’t need to push that. It was that philosophy that ensured the 700 original followers, excited about the name and profile of the account, actually stuck around. I remember vividly one of the best compliments from one of our followers, “if you are not learning from @bigideasedu you are missing out.” When we saw that a few months in to the planning process, we knew we were accomplishing our goal.
Put resources, time and effort towards maintaining the account: I see lots of events create accounts to push people to buy tickets, tweet random content, and then be a ghost for 2 weeks…only to reappear and push ticket sales again. Maintaining a Twitter account is not something to take lightly, especially if you are trying to start a movement. The team has to be committed to curating content, following hashtags, and engaging in the conversation. The people in charge of social media for your movement should not have any other major responsibilities, this is a job in itself. If you have no choice but to be the founder of your movement and manage the social media, then you will need to focus. Only start with one platform, like Twitter. Fight the urge to start a Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc all at once. Stay focused and hustle.
Empower others to join the movement: One of the most epic Twitter moments occurred during the conference. It happened when someone was talking badly about the conference model. We took some big risks in creating an innovative model and very much abandoned the status quo…this didn’t sit well with everyone. It was only a matter of minutes before one of our biggest supporters jumped in to defend the vision. If you are going to start a movement, you cannot let your ego get in the way. You especially cannot let your ego get in the way on Twitter. It’s not your movement, it belongs to everyone that is inspired by the idea. When you see others post content aligning with your ideas, promote their content, engage with them, thank them. They are the reason you have a movement and they are critical to the momentum building.
Use Twitter as an ultimate connector: We knew when we started the account that Twitter would absolutely help to expand our base and connect us to people who believed what we believed. We didn’t know it would connect us with speakers and sell tickets. One of the greatest things Twitter gave us was the connection to @brainzooming founder Mike Brown. We knew we needed a creativity expert but had no clue where to look for one. We tweeted a post about needing someone and used a few hashtags from the creative industry. Later that week we were making arrangements with Mike to come to the conference. He was a phenomenal speaker, huge asset to the event experience, and has been a great partner in our movement. Twitter also helped us sell tickets. As people purchased their ticket they would Tweet about it, and soon enough we’d see an interaction where their friend commented on the tweet saying “if you’re going, I’ll go!”
Use the platforms out there to monitor and pull analytics: Each of our team members had sites they liked using to schedule tweets and monitor analytics. We used BufferApp, HootSuite and TweetDeck in addition to the Twitter app. Many people brush off Twitter and underestimate the powerful qualitative data you can pull from a Twitter feed. Starting a movement with Twitter takes vigilance and a commitment to assessing the account in order to make real-time adjustments to content being shared. Also, after the event, we were lucky enough to have an attendee pull a Hashtracking report on #bigideas12. This data was not only so much fun to read, but incredibly helpful in better understanding the attendee experience. Our big mistake was that we didn’t plan ahead to pull this data, so if it weren’t for an attendee taking the initiative to do it right when they got home we wouldn’t have it. It’s tough to pull that kind of data after the event is over, so plan ahead.
Twitter is a powerful platform. So few of our planning team members had any real clout or credibility in our industry…yet 
. We were young, scrappy and smart. Our team wasn’t made up of the typical well-networked large conference planning committee with a big budget. There is no way this kind of national movement could have existed prior to Twitter. This post is dedicated to @IdeaBlendEDU’s amazing followers.
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