Marketing at SXSW, and how we rocked it

Kabir — Sun, 16 May 2010 16:07:15 +0000

RiotVine rolled in to SXSW a relative unknown, but we did amazingly well thanks to a fun marketing campaign. Here’s how we did it:

Make it relevant: I noticed a lot of spray and pray marketing with companies giving away schwag tagged with their logo, not a good spend for a bootstrapped startup. Find something that fits the theme and is useful during SXSW, e.g.: A small street map of downtown Austin, because your phone will not last the day. Include info about your product on the other side.
Have a simple hook: Make sure you target folks interested in your product. Again, small startup, not a lot of money to spend, so we used Twitter to reach out to influential people and asked them a very simple question..
Give’em something to talk about: You really need something to separate you from the pack. Get crazy, get creative; the best way to get people to talk about you is to give them something to say.

So what did we do? RiotVine is a a social event guide; we help you discover events you’ll love and make it easy to see what your friends are doing. At SXSW, this is something you’d check in the morning before leaving your hotel. And at SXSW, chances are you’re really hungover and would kill for some Advil. So we tweeted to some of our early adopters and a few people in the community to see if they’d like a hangover kit dropped off at their hotel room. Who wouldn’t want one? Relevant to the event, simple hook, and well worth talking about.

It helps that our SXSW guide was awesome, letting you filter parties by which ones had free drinks, free food, and even the ones that didn’t require a SXSW badge. Don’t take our word for it, here’s what Robert Scoble had to say:

Check out some of the tweets about this marketing campaign:

Video of the hangover kit “unboxing” courtesy Jeff Cutler and Mike Langford: http://www.mefeedia.com/watch/29590378

Total marketing spend: South of $100
Reach: Over 1.5 million people
Rocking at SXSW: F’ing priceless.

Huge thanks to Rachel Levy; she was a sport and absolutely indispensable throughout this; hit her up if you’re looking for someone to execute on a marketing plan. Honorable mentions to The Mike Walsh, Tom Monaghan and Jeremy Levine and Aaron of @eatBoston fame.

RiotVine is hiring!

Kabir — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:02:31 +0000

We’re looking to expand our founding team by a couple members, including a mobile application hacker and an entrepreneur/bizdev person. Full descriptions and application are online here: http://riotvine.com/jobs/

Attention baseball fans! Full schedule is now up.

Kabir — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:43:35 +0000

As mentioned in Sunday’s Globe, RiotVine now hosts the entire baseball season schedule, all 2400+ games, available here: http://riotvine.com/baseball/

You’re able to go through and pick off the games you have tickets for, then share’em with all your friends at once to see if they want to join you.

Don’t have tickets? Each event page has a Twitter feed searching for available tickets.

If you’re reading this, chances are you only care about one schedule, so have at it: http://riotvine.com/redsox/

Have issues, questions or concerns? Leave us a comment or hit up the contact link on our site.

Cheers!
Kabir

Avoid the sausage.

Kabir — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:27:05 +0000

I’m extremely proud to announce that RiotVine has unearthed the holy grail of event sites: which events have the best girl/guy ratio! That’s right; when browsing RiotVine you can now see how many people are at the event and your odds of meeting that someone special. For the night, anyway. Check it out at night when most people go out and watch it light up like this:

You don’t need to download anything to use it, just head to RiotVine.com right from your phone or computer.

With this solved, what’s next you ask? Peace on earth. We might need some help.

All of this was made possibly by our friends at Foursquare; check it out and use it for a couple days, you’ll love it!

5 huge reasons to check out RiotVine

Kabir — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:37:46 +0000

Facebook Connect! Share events and see what your Facebook friends are doing. Click here to connect your Facebook account.
Profiles! Get your own URL that you can share with your friends of all the events you’re interested in attending. Here’s mine! Want to see what a friend has planned this week? Look up their profile or..
RSS! Subscribe to a feed that shows you the events your friends are interested in. You can add it to iGoogle so you can see what they’re planning.
Buzz about it! Add your RiotVine profile to your Google profile and RiotVine will show up under Connected Sites in Google Buzz. You can auto-buzz events, so your Buzz followers can jump in.
Mobile! Our beautiful mobile site just launched! Head to http://riotvine.com on your phone to check it out, discover events on the go and see the events your friends are interested in.

And a bonus sixth reason:

6. SXSW! If you’re going or have a friend that’s going, check out http://riotvine.com/sxsw for the easy guide to SXSW. You can easily search lists of parties and showcases, or for bands you want to see to find all the times they’re playing, see all the parties with free drinks, and easily find ones that don’t need a badge or wristband to attend.

That’s five good reasons to use RiotVine. If you’ve got a good reason why you don’t, drop us a line: http://riotvine.com/contact

Don’t be shy; we love to hear people think, even if you’re not a fan. And we’ll give you credit for your ideas.

Rioters Getting Ready to Rally at SXSW!!

Kabir — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 03:44:38 +0000

Our great, big first press release, announcing our massive SXSW party guide. We’ve got thousands of events, all easily searchable. We’ve got a list of free parties, and parties with free drinks! And we’ve got embedded audio on our SXSW showcases. You can even sort events by Twitter buzz. If this is your first year at SXSW, this is the guide for you.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/02/prweb3272214.htm

Looks like RiotVine is all grow’d up. *sniff* *sniff*

Win a Music Festival wristband for a festival in Austin in March (or cash!)

Kabir — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:09:08 +0000

RiotVine is giving away a Music Festival wristband to a lucky winner this year. To enter, head here:
http://wildfireapp.com/website/6/contests/23658

Not sure where to go or how to get around in Austin? Check out our just published unofficial SXSW guide, with over 2300 easily searchable events: http://riotvine.com/sxsw

Win tickets to see Neon Indian for you and a friend!

Kabir — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:32:12 +0000

This takes 2 minutes and gives you 20 chances to win. Click here for Neon Indian show details on RiotVine.

Click the Add to Favorites button, then Sign-Up with your Facebook account.
During sign-up, invite the Facebook friends you want to see Neon Indian with.

Each invite you send automatically enters you to win two guest list passes to see Neon Indian with Bodega Girls! Winner is announced tomorrow morning so enter now. Skip the line, walk right in. We’ll even try to sneak you backstage

Even if you don’t win, come by. We’ll have gift bags for RiotVine users courtesy of Rescue waiting at the merch booth, right up until we run out.

Follow @RiotVineBoston or Fan us on Facebook for more show updates, contests and giveaways!

Questions? Email us.

New feature: Friends list!

Kabir — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:18:52 +0000

Here’s a neat little feature we kicked out a couple weeks ago that I totally love, an active friends list. This is a quick list of the people that follow you on Twitter that are on RiotVine, and we recalculate it every night. This is how we show you the events that your friends are attending, so you can hang out with them more.

If you have a RiotVine account, you can see this by clicking here. If you don’t have a RiotVine account, what’re you waiting for?

New features: Export to iCal, gCal, & Outlook + Additional Search Filters

Kabir — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:57:02 +0000

One of the most requested features we’ve had since launch is the ability to export events to your native calendar app. We’re happy to announce that you’re now able to do just that. Now, when you click Add to My Calendar:

you’ll be able to export the event data directly to the most popular calendars available:

We also take this opportunity to remind you to share this event with your friends online.

If you don’t want to add an event to your RiotVine calendar, you can also export this event to your local calendar from the bar on the right.

The other great addition is the ability to filter events so that RiotVine will just show you what’s happening this weekend or next week, making it easier to drill down to just what you’re looking for. As a teaser, we’ve got major new additions to the filtering options in the works that will help you discover just the events you’re looking for. Finally, tell us what you think of the new features!

-Kabir