The word of last week was definitely Tummler (definition: an entertainer, or master of ceremonies, especially one who encourages audience interaction – from Yiddish Tummler). Before the week started, I had no idea what a Tummler was and by the end of the week I felt I knew him well. I attended two events this week as part of Social Media Week and the word Hummler and to Hummel were mentioned three times. The first was by Kevin Marks of Ribbit who gave a great presentation at social media camp on The Art of Tummeling. It was also mentioned by Deborah Schultz of the Altimeter Group at the event organized by Sprout about building brands on social networks.

Tummler – from Yiddish origins

The idea of the Tummler isn’t new. It is the person who – aids, facilitates, enables, brings together, joins, encourages –people to have a conversation. The question I keep finding myself asking is where should this person hang out? The obvious answer is: go to where the people are. However that isn’t always that easy to determine. If you are a consumer brand then Facebook is probably as good a place as any but it isn’t as easy as that in the B2B world.

If you remember the big reveal of the Skittles site a while ago, the company thought that the Tummler could use Skittles.com as his playground by making the site entirely social. However, I noticed recently in an article  that Skittles has changed its mind because the conversation got out of hand. The site has now been totally changed.

For a B2B brand, I have certainly seen companies use blogs as an effective place for the Tummler to work his/her magic. But equally it is important for the Tummler to be out there in third party earned media channels driving the conversation forward.

In many senses the Chief Tummler, or Chief Conversation Officer, needs to set a strategy that enables all the Tummlers in the organization to be as effective as possbile. This probably means combining the roles of the Chief Communications Officer and Chief Marketing Officer into one. The successful Chief Tummler is the one that ensures that strategies are in place to facilitate conversations across earned media, branded channels such as Facebook and LinkedIn and on the brand website itself. Tummling is a delicate art but there is a fair amount of science to it as well.

Read the original here:
What Is A Tummler And Where Should He Live?