When you’re attending conferences and events, social media is a great way to get your audience actively engaged and increase your interactions. You can reach out to your followers and tell them some of the interesting or thought-provoking parts of your event with the hopes that they’ll give you some sort of response. Live-tweeting is especially good if you’re running an event and are using your company’s social media outlets for promoting your event.
It may be tempting to send tweet after tweet throughout the event with lots of videos or photos to accompany each tweet. However, it’s better to start your live-tweeting with a plan, so you can get the most response from your twitter followers and — more importantly — add to your followers.
Give Your Followers a Heads-Up
Before you start your live-tweeting, make sure you tell your followers what you’ll be doing. While you may enjoy sending numerous tweets within the span of two hours, your audience may be less inclined to read your messages if they flood your followers’ homepage, especially if it happens without any warning.
Giving some warning can be helpful in numerous ways. It alerts your followers that you’ll be live-tweeting. That way, they won’t be caught off guard when they see your normally active twitter account become hyperactive. Additionally, it brings more attention to the event you’re attending. If you plan to use a certain hashtag, definitely include it in your preliminary tweet, so anyone who sees your tweet will know what to look for.
Don’t Overwhelm Your Audience
Try to restrain the number of tweets you send throughout the event. You’re certainly going to find many parts of your event fascinating, especially if you’re the one who organized it all. However, your followers will most likely lose interest if you tweet non-stop or promote the same story over and over again. For example, if you planned a motorcycle lawyer event for your company, keep in mind that not everyone will be interested in hearing about motorcycles for the next two hours.
Stick to two or three main parts of the event to promote. There’s not a set amount of tweets you should stick with, since you’ll hopefully be responding to your followers while commenting on the event, but avoid something outrageous like 100 tweets in an hour. It may help if you pre-schedule when you send your tweets, so you know just how many tweets you’ll be submitting.
Network within the Event
Remember that there is a room full of people who most likely have access to twitter at your event. When you’re talking to people, ask if they have a twitter account and let them know about your hashtag. Once you send them a tweet with the hashtag, they have the opportunity to tweet back at you.
Just remember not to bombard your newly-networked acquaintance with tweets about the event. Remember that your buddy is trying to enjoy the event, and that doesn’t necessarily mean responding to tweets every five minute.
Expand on the Story
When you’re live-tweeting, you have two options: repeat the message verbatim or add to the messages with your own input. Your followers will be more interested in what you tweet if you make it a more personal experience.
Chances are, if you’re live-tweeting, you have access to a camera phone and possibly a video recorder. Use these to your advantage. Take videos of behind-the-scene events or post a selfie with some of the speakers. This will make it more interactive and engaging, especially since images generally elicit more response than text alone.
Make Your Live-Tweeting a Success
Live-tweeting is a fun way to get your followers more engaged in specific events you’re attending. You can relay messages and ask for responses from your audience. It’s important to remember that you can send dozens of tweets throughout your event, but it will be pointless if none of them garner any responses.
Make sure you start discussions with your tweets. Get your follower engaged with questions or images. Try not to overwhelm them — but still keep them up-to-date. Your live-tweeting is the bridge that connects your audience with the event, and you are the only one who can control what is said.