#findray

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend the Annual CUPRAP Spring Conference. It was a good conference and worth my time. But I saw an interesting social media campaign by a vendor that I thought was worth mentioning here.

A few days before the conference I started to tweet using the hashtag #cuprap. Whenever I speak on social media I like to use the conference hashtag as a teaching point. Zone 5, a communications firm, was also using the hashtag with an interesting promotion. They were encouraging people to #findray at the conference. There were buttons and logos and Ray even started tweeting from sessions and some of the nighttime conference functions. At one point I think Ray even made a comment about the mustard sauce at the Thursday night dinner.

Eventually I did find Ray – or maybe Ray found me. But Ray turned out to be Ray Witkowski an employee of Zone 5 who had not attended the conference before. Once you found him you got a t-shirt and a chance to win an Ipad. I found the approach refreshing, interesting, and a good use of social media to create buzz. I may never use the firm but they will stick in my head as innovative and interesting in the future.

CUPRAP Conference

I had the opportunity to attend my first CUPRAP conference today and present with Alana Mauger, Director of Communications, at Montgomery County Community College in PA. We had a great session with lots of good questions and interaction. You can follow the CUPRAP conversation on twitter at #CUPRAP. I promised to post our powerpoint so here it is please feel free to download it and share/steal ideas from it. I’m sorry we didn’t get through everything but as one twitter follower commented this afternoon”You’ve done a good job when you don’t get to finish.”