How to Live Tweet an Event
October 9th, 2009Posted by: Hannah Del Porto Posted in Tips, Twitter
This week my husband asked me for tips on live-tweeting some conferences he would be attending. As with pretty much all forms of communication, how you interact depends on the circumstances, who you are and who your followers are. But unless you’re Obama or Bono, most of this advice will apply to you.
General Guidelines:
1. Don’t overdo it. Tweet only what you would expect to interest most readers.
2. Attribute quotes. If a presenter or attendee provides good information include their name or twitter handle as the source.
3. Help non-attendees follow the event. Tweet to announce what is about to happen.
4. Watch for responses. Regularly check for responses to your tweets or questions about the event so you can respond in a timely manner.
5. Use an event hashtag (set it up ahead of time) so people can easily follow tweets about the event.
6. Retweet useful information and insights from conference attendees.
7. Don’t miss the conference with your face stuck to your Blackberry. Connected with someone at the conference? Meet them by the front door to continue the conversation in person.
Good example tweets:
- Mr. Smith’s presentation on How to Increase Occupancy During a Recession in 10 mins Room F #hospconf
- Mr. Smith: Customer service is important but a quality product is still key #hospconf
- Stop by our booth to pick up new property brochures and free refreshments #hospconf
- @questioner Our presentation is tomorrow at 2pm in Room B #hospconf
- Great day at #hospconf tomorrow’s focus is on hospitality in developing countries.
- After #hospconf cocktails at 8pm. Meet at La Cantina on New York Ave and 16th Street.
- RT @confattendee Just learned that our company is up 15% in reservations for Oct! #hospconf
Bad example tweets:
- Eating lunch [no one cares]
- Unacceptable response time accounts for 40% of dropped calls [where did you learn this?]
- Just talked to an important client, wow is he boring [he can read your tweets!!! Don’t do this!]
- Leaving the conference to hit the bar [Keep it to yourself unless it’s a networking opportunity for conference attendees]
- [where are your hashtags?!?!]
Live tweeting is meant to enhance the experience of a conference, not replace it. Keep most of your interaction to fellow attendees and, unless you are doing something *extremely* exciting, keep it to around half a dozen tweets per hour.
Remember that your followers who are not interested in the event may be put off by the stream of event-related tweets. Consider what proportion of your followers are in your industry or potentially interested in the event before deciding how much event coverage to send out.
If you want to share comprehensive coverage of an event, consider live blogging with ScribbleLive , CoverItLive or your own blog, so fans aren’t held hostage to your updates. Post a link in Twitter to your liveblogging stream so those followers who are interested know where to go.
Another trick is to leave off the event hashtag when sending tweets that aren’t important enough to share with the crowd, like “@chuckfitz Where are you sitting? I can’t find you!” While the tweet will still annoy your personal followers, it will keep the tweet from reaching people following the event through the hashtag and from appearing on the big screen.
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Tags: conference, live tweet, live-tweeting
