ive tweeting an event is a great way to accomplish a couple of things.
It can help you grow your Twitter audience and promote your personal brand, it is great for networking and establishing yourself as a thought leader, and, let’s face it, it can be a really fun thing to do!
Live tweeting isn’t difficult, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. Knowing this, we’ve put together this live tweeting guide to teach you all about:
- How to prepare for a live tweeting session
- What to do during the event
- How to make the most of your live tweeting session after the event has ended
This guide aims to help and educate event attendees. If you are an event planner or organizer, we have an article written especially for you! Check out our “Live tweeting: A comprehensive guide for event managers”, we are certain you will find it very useful!
Before the event
There are a couple of things you can do pre-event to make the most out of your live tweeting session.
Think of these as of doing your homework. It might be a bit of extra work, but it always pays off in the end.
Decide which talks and lectures you plan to attend
If you are attending a small event you might be able to live tweet every single talk and lecture.
However, if you are going to be at a large event this is going to be impossible for you to manage. At larger events, there are often a couple of sessions going on at the same time and you might not be able to sit in all of the ones you’re interested in.
It is a good idea to plan out your day in advance. Prioritize the talks you definitely want to hear and live tweet and work your way around the venue with a purpose. If you know exactly what you want to see and hear you will avoid wasting time beelining through the venue.
Try and get in the conference rooms early enough to grab a good seat! Ideally, you want to be close enough to the stage to hear and see everything, and sitting in a position where you can take good photos to attach to your tweets.
Pro tip: Tweets with pictures attached receive more engagement than those without. According to Twitter’s own research, up to 313% more, in fact!
Do the research
You know what they say, “Preparation is the key to success”.
Tweeting quickly is key to a successful live tweeting session, so coming to an event well-prepared will definitely spare you a lot of stress and make the job much easier.
Do your research on the speakers and the topics they plan to cover in their speeches and lectures. Make sure to have a look at the event program at least a couple of days before the event start (it is usually posted on the event website) and study it carefully.
Introduce yourself to the topics of speeches you plan to live tweet from. The more background knowledge you have on the subject you plan to tweet about the faster will you be at tweeting, and the more integrity and substance will your commentary have. Focusing on quality will ensure your tweets get shared and liked at a much higher rate than they normally would.
Learn a few tidbits about the speakers as well! Educate yourself about their prior work and perhaps even watch a video of one of their former speeches. This will not only help you craft better tweets but will also give you an opportunity to get familiar with their speech patterns and their style of presentation. All of this will help you make smarter decisions when live tweeting their sessions.
Last but definitely not least, make sure you know what the official hashtag for the event is.
If the organizers have done their job right this shouldn’t be at all difficult to do. You should be able to find the official event hashtag on the event web page, your event ticket, in the newsletter (if you’ve received one), the Twitter page of the event and so on. If it is not there try checking the Facebook page of the event (or the event organizer). Still no sign of it? Consider gently tapping the shoulder of the event organizer via a tweet or a DM and asking about it.
If everything else fails, see if there is an unofficial event hashtag people have started using in their Twitter conversations. You can choose to use this hashtag or try and create a new one if none seems to be in use yet. Just remember to keep it short, sweet and relevant.
Alert your followers
Before you start live tweeting, let your followers know what you are going to be up to.
Some of them will rearrange their daily activities in order to be able to follow your live tweeting session, while others might opt to temporarily mute you if they have no interest in the event you are attending. Whatever your followers decide to do it is always polite to give a heads-up when you know you’ll be tweeting up a storm.
Temporarily change your Twitter bio
Your tweets will be seen and shared during your live tweeting session. In order to let your followers who might be tuning in late know what’s going on, but also for the benefit of strangers who might visit your profile after seeing one of your tweets being retweeted by someone they follow, consider temporarily changing your Twitter bio. Your Twitter bio is an important and often overlooked piece of online property you can easily capitalize on.
Let everyone know where you are going and what you’ll be doing – and don’t forget to let them know which hashtag you will be using along the way.
During the event
You are finally here! The event is booming and there are people rushing everywhere! But not you. No, you’ve done your homework and you’ve come prepared. So you’re cool. Collected.
Take a deep breath and take your time to enjoy the lively commotion. Soak in the atmosphere and get ready to be the eyes and ears to your followers.
Share the most important parts of talks and lectures
While following the talks and lectures you’ve chosen to live tweet focus on identifying what the most important messages are. You do not need to tweet every single sentence said by the speaker you are listening to. Quality before quantity is a rule you should go by here.
Quote the speakers correctly, using their @handle
The most popular form of live tweeting from events and conferences is quoting the speakers. Though it seems a fairly simple idea there are still right and wrong ways to go about this.
When quoting the speakers make absolutely sure you are hearing them well and understanding their message. Take great care to quote them correctly, and when possible, add their Twitter handles in your tweets.
This isn’t only courteous but could possibly also help you connect with the speakers on a more personal level once they’ve noticed your tweets.
Weigh in with your own thoughts and questions
Quoting the speakers is a great way of giving real value to your followers. But you should also feel comfortable sharing your own thoughts and opinions with your Twitter audience.
How are you enjoying the event? Are you agreeing with the speakers? What are you learning? What do you find the most exciting about the event? Share these with your followers! It will not only help you establish yourself as a thought leader or an expert on the subject but will also help your followers get to know you personally.
Remember to use photos to enrich your tweets
Catch more views and gain more attention by adding good quality photos to your tweets. Your followers will be more likely to retweet posts with photos attached to them and now that adding images to your tweets doesn’t use up any of the 140 characters available to use in a tweet there is really no reason not to do this!
Just remember to share good photos. Try and avoid too dark and blurry photos and instead go for interesting crowd shots, photos of the venue or photos of the speakers to go with those quotes you are going to be sharing with your followers.
Retweet other live tweeters
Chances are, you won’t be the only one live tweeting the event you’re at. Be a good sport and retweet other live tweeters whenever they tweet something interesting, or maybe catch a talk or a conversation you missed.
In many cases, retweeting other live tweeters will earn you a couple of retweets in return, and more often than not is a good prequel to networking the event.
There is plenty of room in the Twitterverse for every single one of us. Share the spotlight and you will definitely reap the rewards.
After the event
Goodbyes. Never fun, but necessary. Don’t worry, though! There are still things to do!
Important things. Fun things!
Thank your followers for their attention
Just as it is polite to announce to your followers on Twitter you will be live tweeting from an event, it is equally polite and good form to thank them for their attention once your live tweeting session has come to an end.
If you are planning to blog about the event this is also a good opportunity to let them know when and where they can look forward to finding your upcoming article!
Connect with influencers, attendees, and other live tweeters
If you planned to make some new Twitter connections and friendships at the event, now is the time to go for it!
While the memory is still fresh seek out everyone interesting you hoped to connect with and follow them on Twitter or reach out via any other social media network.
Create your own event hub with Wallery!
You went, you saw and you live tweeted it all.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could collect all of your tweets and even Instagram photos from the event and save or display them in a beautiful way, to come back to them later, to show your day off to your friends and followers or even to embed on your website or blog?
With Wallery, you can.
Wallery lets you create a social media hub from your hashtag or username. Choose to display only your own tweets or mix them up with tweets from the other event guests! You can choose the colors, patterns and even photos to be displayed in the background, edit the typeface, style and much more!
Share the link to your social media hub or embed it on your website or blog. Wallery will always be there, ready for you to come back and skim through your posts to relive the fun memories of the events gone by.
In conclusion
Live tweeting can be an exciting, fun and a learning experience.
Follow the tips in this live tweeting guide next time you are tweeting live from an event and you will definitely get more value out of the experience!
Do you have your own tips for live tweeting you’d like to share with us and our audience? Why not tweet us at @WalleryHQ? We’d love to hear from you!
