Some of the greatest buzz I’ve generated on Twitter have been from live-tweeting events — from annual commencement ceremonies, to our president’s first day on the job, to an on-campus lecture from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. The response has been great.
Live-tweeting allows communication to flow to and from the event, engages audiences wherever they may be and creates a digital diary of all that happened. It isn’t the end-all-be-all of promoting a University event. But I still think it’s kind of cool.
Here’s a few tips I’ve picked up along the way:
Live Tweeting Tip No. 1: Pick the right event
Not every on-campus event is ripe for the tweeting. While it might be cool to live-tweet when St. Louis Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III comes to campus, it’s maybe not so cool to tweet a memorial service for a longtime professor who passes away.
Live Tweeting Tip No. 2: Use your homepage as your home.
Your company/organization website is the one place on the Internet where you have control. There are certain limitations that come with using various social media platforms, but those limitations fall away on your own site. You can control the message and measure use accordingly on your own site. A home page should be just that — home. Use it to coordinate and centralize any effort utilizing social media.
Live Tweeting Tip No. 3: Create a hashtag.
Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding context to tweets. They don’t need to be registered and can provide useful context and cues for recall, as well as increased utility for the user. Create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with the pound symbol: #hashtag. Keep it short and keep it simple.
Live Tweeting Tip No. 4: Tell more than Twitter.
An Internet user need not be on Twitter to follow your Twitter stream. The stream can be viewed in Facebook, on a webpage, or through a simple Twitter search. If it’s going to appear in all those places, why not let people know. Blog posts, news updates and press releases should all promote the endeavor. Successful live tweeting is a community effort.
Live Tweeting Tip No. 5: Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Nothing will kill a live-tweeting effort faster than a venue with no wifi or cell reception. University theaters can be beautiful venues, although most are designed to keep digital signals out. Make sure you can access the Internet at an acceptable speed wherever the event may be.
Live Tweeting Tip No. 6: Bring your charger.
Bring your charger. Bring your charger. Bring your charger. I’ve been burned by this one more than once. There’s only so many times you can choose to dismiss the “low battery” message before your phone dismisses you. A helpful tip: Lower the brightness level and far as you can during the event and the battery will last longer.
Live Tweeting Tip No. 7: Provide perspective.
My goal through any live-tweeting effort is to provide a perspective others may not be able to achieve. It’s why they’re following in the first place, right? I’m a big fan of the behind-the-scenes shot and showing what’s happening from more than one point-of-view. An event experience is different for the presenter than for the audience. I try and show both.
Live Tweeting Tip No. 8: Cram a 1,000 words into 140 characters.
People love pictures. They’ve click on a picture link twice as often as any other. Sure, I could tell them what the scene looks like 140 characters at a time, but what’s better than actually showing them? A bonus would be to Tweet snippets of video.
Live Tweeting Tip No. 9: Tweet for the record.
Tweets live on long after the event is over. People will use the hashtag to re-live the event, remember what happened or explore it from other angles. Keep this notion of a daily diary in mind. Use your account to create a “Tweets of record” — a a reliable institution that publishes trustworthy descriptions of events.
Live Tweeting Tip No. 10: Measure success and act accordingly.
Every opportunity is a learning one. When the event is over, revisit the stream. What tweets elicited comments? Who, if anyone, was actively participating? Why? What can I do better for the next time?
Related posts:
Very good list for tweeting an event. I would add one more to the list – pre-event tweeting. See who is going to be there. Get a feel for the audience. If there is no audience, it might not be worth the effort in tweeting. This is also a good time to solidify a hashtag too. There may be multiple hashtags for the event prior to an event, and with pre-event tweeting you can narrow down which hashtag would work the best (for example: with CASE District conferences it could be #CASEVI #CASE6 #CASEsix) Also, for speakers who pre-tweent you can find out what the audience is interested in hearing from you during the preso.
Great points, Travis. Always worth checking in on the backchannel to see what the audience may be thinking. Always know thy audience, right?
Do you have a suggestion for a tool that captures tweets from an event or a specific hashtag?