After Action Report: Social Media Tools at SDCC

Since this was the first year that Twitter was available at the SDCC, expectations were high that the social media tool (and others) would help deliver buzz for new movies.

One company failed horribly to create positive buzz: EA's "Sin to Win" contest (overviews here and here). The use of 'booth babes' at the con is questionable anyhow, but given the family-friendly atmosphere that SDCC is trying to create, EA's suggestion to commit "acts of lust" with any vendor's staff and Tweet a picture was downright stupid. Look for major backlash on Twitter at #eafail.

From what I saw, the publishers and video game companies did a better job in creating buzz than the movie studios. Variety reports their POV here.

Some creative uses of social media I witnessed:

• DC Comics offered contests before panels - you could text to win limited edition Green Lantern figures.
  
• The Attack of the Show panel encouraged people to Tweet why AOTS is awesome, and prizes were given out at the end of the program.
• If you were at a panel, adding "AP" (for 'at panel') to your Tweets gave your info more credibility.
• Retweeting info helped drive buzz. Most of the people I spoke with were RTing rather than creating new content.
• I saw a lot of bloggers with their netbooks out and posting live info (almost providing a complete transcription of the panels). This was nice when I was double-booked and had to make a choice between programs. (Flickr then provided the photos for panels I couldn't attend.)
  

As a con attendee, it was fun to keep an eye on the #sdcc Twitter feeds to see what was cool and exciting. While eating, resting or waiting for a panel, I kept up on all of the new information from panels I couldn't go to. In short, I was able to multitask the programming and stay up to date on what was happening real time.

I Tweeted anything that looked cool or exciting as well, but had many technological issues that prevented me from doing so. There were many spots within the hall that prevented me from getting data or cell coverage on my phone.

Here is the grab bag of phone tools I tried to use throughout the con:

• e-mailing pictures and posts directly to this blog using Gmail on my android phone.
• SMS'ing pictures and posts to this blog via my phone's messaging tools
• Using Pingdroid to status update Facebook and Twitter at the same time
  
• Leveraging Ping.fm (any time a new blog post would go up, it would automatically feed my Twitter accounts (danielscotolson and efrcc)
• Using the following Twitter apps on my android phone (in order of preference): TwitterRide, I Tweet!, Twidroid, TwitteRx, Twit2go
• Using Bloo to update Facebook status.

It was interesting to see how each of the programs worked (or didn't) based on my phone's battery levels or data reception throughout the day. Performance-wise, I was very disappointed with Ping.fm's post errors as most of the the links it provided were dead (I need to research to see if it was Pingdroid's fault or an issue with the RSS feeds going through ping.fm).