#Rometeam live Twinterviews / Rome SDS live interviews on Twitter

Nice and smart move by Rome Snowboards (@RomeSDS) with the launch of their “Ask The Riders series” live on Twitter!
The series will start this coming Wednesday, June 17th, with Bjorn Leines. Rome’s pro shred will be on Twitter to answer all the questions from fellow riders in real time.

The independent, rider-driven action sports website 5ones.com (@5ones) kicked of this kind of live Twitter interviews a few weeks back when with Professional Skateboarder Rob Dyrdek. They got their readers to submit some questions as comments on their blog post and used some of them for the Twinterview (perfect term seen on of the comments by the way).

Rome’s approach is more direct, letting the fans take the lead and ask the questions. This is a perfect opportunity for riders to have a “conversation” with one of the most talented American pro-riders and get him to talk about things that they never read about in classical magazine style interviews.
Rome has prepared everything right by advising the people to use the #Rometeam “hashtag” to track the conversation both while it happens, and as it will continue over the coming weeks, giving it an afterlife on the Web.
Of course, Rome put in some incentive to be sure to attract participants as well with a new pair 2010 Rome Folsom boots to win in a draw.

Smart move from Rome then because:

• they are the first snowboard brand to do it – others will be seen as copycats
• they will increase their number of followers on Twitter (only 400 as I write), which is positive for reaching out to more people in the future
• they are offering a totally unique, interactive experience to the participants, and really engaging with them in a conversation about snowboarding via their pro-rider

Now doing this also presents some risks:

• Rome really needs to let the conversation naturally evolve around their brand and products and NOT push products at the participants during the Twinterview
• They have to be ready to face hard questions and answer them honestly
• They need to graft Bjorn Leines with a couple of additional hands to keep up with the flow of questions that will come down!

The “Twinterview” is a great example of how to use Twitter to engage with your followers.
There are many other ways to do it, and BROADER is here to help you set up these kind of experiences that will definitely earn your brand the credibility to participate within the Twitter community, gain advocates and ultimately increase sales through word of mouth.
Looking forward participating in the Rome Twinterview on Wednesday!