Live Tweeting: 10 Event Planner Pointers

How to Expand Your Event’s Reach 140 Characters At a Time

Just like live blogging, live tweeting is an important, efficient way to expand your PR and/or marketing reach before and during the event or conference. It’s also useful for leveraging social media by extending your live event online via Twitter while showing that your organization is social media savvy.

10 Live tweeting tips for event planners

Since the 140 Character Conference New York, which focuses on Twitter, is Wednesday and Thursday (BTW, if you want to attend, use code CLICKZ before midnight Tuesday, June 14th) here are ten ways to encourage live tweeting at your next event to maximize it’s impact. Understand that there can be a wide variation of what different attendees tweet based on their interests and Twitter style.

  1. Create unique event hashtag. Where possible, minimize the number of characters and keep some relationship to the event. Before you promote it, search Twitter to check whether anyone has used this hashtag or whether it’s closely associated with someone’s Twitter handle.
  2. Publicize the hashtag in your promotional marketing materials. Remember, your goal is to raise awareness and build excitement for your event. This means encourage participants to promote it on relevant social media forums including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and their blogs.
  3. Secure the best wifi available for your event. Not having wifi hinders tweeting since attendees must use their smartphones, tablets or other options. From an attendee’s perspective, this hurdle hinders tweeting.
  4. Use signage to distribute free wifi information. Includes wifi name and password. Event planner tip: Get wifi sponsored and promote the sponsor’s name on wifi signage and in announcements.
  5. Provide seating with tables and power outlets for live tweeters. Treat live tweeters like press or live bloggers by making them feel special. The reality is that they’re helping spread the word of your program just like members of the press. Event planner tip: Where appropriate, have one or more live tweeters sponsored. (Keep these tables free of liquids since I’ve seen at least one attendee’s computer washed at a show.)
  6. Inform presenters and panelists that event will be live tweeted. If you’re promoting live tweeting, let presenters know that their remarks may be tweeted to a broader audience. Since you’re supporting live tweeting, air any presenter concerns before the show. Further, encourage presenters to promote this on their own Twitter streams and other forms of social media.
  7. Provide a list of presenters, their companies and Twitter handles. This helps the people who are live tweeting to reference speakers and give them attribution. This helps expand the reach of your messages.
  8. Incorporate Twitter bait into your talk. Leverage Twitter to your advantage by creating a few great tweetable phrases. Think catchy word play to get listeners attention and drive tweets.
  9. Show Twitter stream on screen in real time. Showing what others are tweeting about the event encourages other members of the audience to tweet. Additionally, it can spark real time interactions on Twitter where members of the audience communicate with each other regarding what’s being said on the panel.
  10. Source audience questions in real time via Twitter. Get the broader audience involved through the use of Twitter. It’s helpful to announce that you’re monitoring Twitter for questions from the audience both live and on Twitter.

To maximize the impact of live tweeting at your next panel, event or conference, use these tips early in your planning process to help promote your event and attract engagement before and during your event.

Do you have any specific live tweeting tips that you’d add to this list? If so, what are they?

Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen


NOTE: If you want to attend the 140 Character Conference in New York, this Wednesday and Thursday, use the code CLICKZ before midnight Tuesday to get a 20% discount. (Disclaimer: This discount is directly from Jeff Pulver. I don’t make any revenue on this transaction.)

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Photo credit: Adam Tinworth via Flickr

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