IDFA continued its celebration of National Ice Cream Month by co-hosting a Twitter party at #IceCreamMonth last Wednesday with five member companies and The Motherhood, a network of mom bloggers. The goal was to get as many people as possible talking about the good times they've had while eating ice cream and to keep the conversation going long after National Ice Cream Month has passed.

According to Radian6, a social media monitoring service, IDFA accomplished the first part of its goal with 3,110 tweets, 271 party participants and more than 15 million impressions. The hashtag for the party, #IceCreamMonth, was a trending topic, even reaching the number one spot, for much of the hour.

An average Twitter party garners two million to five million impressions, a figure that represents the number of people who actively follow the bloggers and could have read the tweets during the party hour. A highly successful Twitter party normally would be in the range of six million to eight million impressions, according to The Motherhood, which has hosted similar parties for other organizations and trade groups.

Thank You, Sponsors!

The party included an ice cream trivia contest, and the five winners will receive gift baskets of ice cream products and coupons donated by the sponsors.

IDFA would like to thank the five companies that co-hosted and sponsored the party. They are Dippin' Dots LLC, Perry's Ice Cream Company, Inc., Pierre's Ice Cream Company, Velvet Ice Cream Company, Inc., and Wells Enterprises, Inc. Follow them on Twitter @Blue_Bunny, @DippinDots, @perrysicecream, @PierresTweets, and @VelvetIceCream.

For more information on the value of social media, read this article, "Social Media Are Giving a Voice to Taste Buds," which ran Monday in The New York Times.

Survey Garners Strong Coverage

IDFA's national release of results from its member survey on ice cream garnered wide pick-up in a variety of media outlets and reinforced the marketing efforts of member companies. Coverage included: NBC News, Huffington Post, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, National Journal, Gannett News Bureau, Houston Press, CBS Detroit, Patch Newspapers and Travel+Leisure. 

"The View" and "Fox and Friends," two television programs with national audiences, also included National Ice Cream month segments that featured ice cream company CEOs.

For more information about the Twitter Party, contact Marti Pupillo, IDFA director of communications at mpupillo@idfa.org or Jeannette Roeder, a member of IDFA's social media team, at jroeder@idfa.org.

For more details about the ice cream survey, contact Peggy Armstrong, IDFA vice president of communications, at parmstrong@idfa.org.