Citizen journalists love interesting experiences

A great way to get your organization noticed is to share an interesting experience with "citizen journalists" and let them tell your story. (Citizen journalists include bloggers, podcasters, video-bloggers, people active on Twitter, and the like).

For example, at South-by-Southwest, my friend Christopher Barger, Director, Global Social Media at General Motors organized an opportunity for people to test drive the not-yet-released Chevy Volt electric car. That resulted in hundreds of blog posts and thousands of tweets.

When I was given an opportunity to open the NASDAQ stock market last year, 50 people joined me in the worlds first Tweetup at a stock market open.

Or consider what the United States Marine Corps did this week at Marine Week Boston. Media and bloggers were given an opportunity to take a 20 minute flight in a V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

Direct link to video in high definition.

The flight originated at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, MA, went out into suburban Boston, flew over downtown and returned. Unlike commercial aircraft, we were encouraged to use our wireless mobile devices throughout the flight. It was very satisfying to live tweet while flying.

On the flight I was on, several of my Boston-area friends were aboard. You can read reports from:
Steve Garfield
CC Chapman
Eric Schwartzman
Doug Haslam

If you don't have a hot toy to give people rides in like GM and the Marines, why not organize a dinner for bloggers with your CEO? Or a special Webinar to pre-announce a new offering. Or a product sample? Or something even more clever?

Disclosure: I have done pro-bono work for the U.S. Department of Defense and the Marines.

Comments

[chandani]

Some very helpful and interesting point for all business type. Though I believe in the "citizen journalists". I am still overwhelmed by the increasing number of social media use. It is really hard to calculate or know if your message is reaching your target.

[Avil Beckford]

David,

Thanks for sharing and letting your readers experience what you are experiencing in the aircraft. That's a unique experience that most people will never have.

[AJGerritson]

Hi David,

Very cool video! Thanks for sharing (admittedly I am jealous of that experience flying in the Osprey). I think the business social media dinner is a great idea. We have used tactics like this to promote our hotel clients (we give people free nights and ask them to tweet or blog about their stay in real time) and we always invite social media folks to our restaurant media dinners.

For those reading this that are not involved with PR, restaurant media dinners were typically organized for traditional media (food writers/critics) to come and taste a restaurant's new menu, etc.

[David Meerman Scott]

@AJ - the flight was very interesting indeed.

Great idea to offer people experiences in your hotel. Good luck with it.

David

[Jlkaskey]

Nice post, I was wondering what the helicopter was doing on the common.

Inviting high profile "citizen journalists" makes sense, but it seems that anyone with a Twitter or Facebook page could be considered a "citizen journalist" these days, so a program like this could be effective even without a major name attending.

[Todd Van Hoosear]

Hi David -- wasn't that a kick, not being told to turn off our phones? It was so nice to see you last week. I just finished up my "debrief" from the Osprey flight at http://itsfreshground.com/2010/05/marines/

I think that one of the goals was to reach out beyond the typical ooh-rah milblogger to average (from the Marine's perspective at least) people with a little bit of reach and some authenticity. It worked on that end and on many others.

[Fred Kapoor]

Wow! It must be cool to be able to tweet while flying!!! I enjoyed the video a lot, it is very interesting and it must have been a great experience for you indeed. Thank you very much for sharing it.

[Vini]

I agree with Fred Kapoor.

Vini

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[SEO Nottingham]

I must agree that this is really an interesting experience and I hope I could experience the same. Thanks for the vid!