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The Royal Moscow Mule
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Last Tuesday saw the return of the London Bloggers Meetup with a trip to Smirnoff for a mixology lesson. It was actually the 10th meetup I’ve organised and along with the help of Rax and co at Splendid Communications it was really quite a special night.
As you’ll probably know, I am always interested in hearing from potential sponsors, well those who at least can provide some value or entertainment for our community of bloggers. In the past those sponsors who have tried to simply sell have generally fallen flat on their face.
Splendid got in touch a while back and dreamt up some creative ideas for how to engage with the all of you bloggers. I don’t know who exactly devised the idea of a custom cocktail for everyone’s blog, but it certainly worked… I have to say I was delighted with my Royal Moscow Mule – see recipe below.
Essentially everyone who attended had a cocktail custom designed for them based on their blog’s content and style. If anyone wants a case study on how to tailor your messaging to reach a blogger audience, I can’t think of a finer example. The research done by Rax and co to draw out the key characteristics from each blog was detailed and this translated into fantastic cocktail ingredients. Kudos to Rax for that I suspect.
From a blogger outreach perspective, this really was first class PR. Well designed and planned, and very well executed. For us bloggers, it was fantastic to be looked after so well by a generous host. This was evident in reaction seen on the evening and in the social media sphere (or sociosphere perhaps).
Based on the feedback on Meetup I would say everyone who attended had an enjoyable time. An average feedback rating of 4.94 out of 5. From my perspective, it was perhaps one of the most enjoyable evenings - and that wasn’t just the cocktails!
What’s next for the meetup then? Well, we don’t have any set dates yet, but I have two speakers lined up to talk about their blog life, along with another drink related sponsor or two. Keep a look out for dates on Meetup soon.
Oh and I’ll be announcing the winner of the Blog08 competition sponsored by Essential Travel soon too.
The Bloggers Summer Social
I’m not going to write very much about the London Bloggers Summer Social, just pass on some of the feedback I received:
Mex
“ Excellent event. Lovely location looking out onto the river. Stella sponsorship was extremely well pitched with nice competition, some goodies and drinks - kudos for not just supplying Stella ”
Lewis
“ Best yet me-thinks! ”
jedb
“ Really good time was had… got there early and had time for good chats with new faces. Well done Stella for the sponsorship. See you lucky people on Friday in the Airship! ”
Navin
“ had an excellent time.. a very helpful and warm organiser.. and warm knowledgeable people.. good stuff to talk about.. ”
Chris
“ Brilliant! ”
Gary Andrews
“ Great idea, really good evening. Everybody was really friendly, was good to meet other bloggers. Great fun. ”
I have to say, I agree with all of the above. It was a great night. Thanks must go out to Jason Mical at Edelman for arranging the Stella Artois sponsorship. For me it was a really great way for Stella to engage with the blogging community, but I’d be really interested in hearing your feedback too.
Did you appreciate Stella’s sponsorship, could they have done anything differently, was the airship competition suitable, did you take a glass and a USB stick.. and would you be interested in more corporate involvement at the meetups?
Please let me know your thoughts with a comment or two..
Peter Marshall has kindly added some photos to the meetup page and there are a few of my terrible snaps below, including a photo of the airship!
The winners of the ride on the Stella Airship are listed below and their entries can all be read on the Stella competition post:
Epicurienne
Robert McIntosh
Lewis
Jed
Debbie
Allison
Enjoy your flight guys (if the wind ever drops enough for the airship to take off that is!).
Thanks everyone for making the socials what they are today! I have to share Pete’s thoughts:
“ Lovely venue, lovely people - I’m convinced that if we really got our heads together we could come up with the next Google 
met people with some amazing new ideas and angles on existing technologies ”
I’m going to skip August and take a summer holiday, but we’ll be back in September with some potentially exciting new supporters.
All the best,
Andy
Stella’s Joining us for the Summer Party
No not Stella McCartney, but Stella Artois. That’s right our friends at Stella Artois have decided London’s hard working bloggers deserve some cool, crisp, liquid refreshment and have agreed to sponsor our summer party. They’ve promised to buy everyone a couple of pints of cold Stella, or a glass of wine, or a soft drink as you fancy.
Not only is Stella buying the beers, but they also are running a fabulous competition just for members of the London Bloggers Meetup. The prize is a trip in the Stella Artois: Star Over London airship.. to take in London from above. Currently retailing at £185.00, this really is a fantastic opportunity! Thanks Stella!
So how do you win such a fantastic prize?
It’s simple, in 150 words or less, describe your local pub and what it is that makes you keep going back..?’
Simply post your answer as a comment to this post by close of play on Friday 25th July. The entries will be judged based on entertainment value - the more entertaining the more likely you are to win!
There are SIX places up for grabs!
Well, what are you waiting for..!
We’ll announce the winners at the Summer Social on the 29th. Get writing folks and I’ll see you all on the 29th!
Andy
Blogger Time - That’s a Wrap
Time to wrap up another bloggers meetup and once again I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I’m always happy to hear feedback, both positive and negative, as it helps me to refine the meetups and provide a forum everyone can get gain some benefit from – whether that’s socially, educationally or simply through enjoying a beer. I tried something new this time by arranging for some presenters - as had been requested by plenty of group members – and I though they all added something of value.
Xavier’s presentation on making people comment was entertaining, valuable and delivered beautifully, check out the slides below if you want a recap - although perhaps the best tip was to promise a Belgian beer in exchange for a comment. Improbulus made a spirited attempt at explaining some of the basics of SEO which was useful and I’m sure some of the newer bloggers would have learned a few tricks. Tony’s introduction to Wordcamp UK was an insight into open source event organising, but aside from those headaches, good to know for any WordPress bloggers at least (shame it’s in Birmingham though Tony…). I have to agree with Peter that I’m more than happy to listen to a sponsor in exchange for a free beer, so thanks to mobile social network ‘M3′ for coming along. If anyone wants a free M3 t-shirt, you just have to send us a note with your thoughts, impressions and general feedback. M3 is a startup in beta and any assistance I’m sure will be gratefully received.
Well, here are Xavier’s slides…
And here are some photos of the night…
As I said, thanks to all of the comments, duly noted. We will rebalance the social / presentation aspect with just one speaker at future events. Also, if anyone has any strong opinions on the involvement of sponsors I’d very much like to hear them. Does it work at the meetups, is it p*ssing you off, are there other types of companies you would like involved etc?? I’m more than happy to explore the options.
Thanks again to everyone who keeps turning up. It’s always great to see the usual suspects, but also so many new faces at each event.
Cheers,
Andy
PS Xavier is interested in hearing about potential work opportunities in case anyone is looking…