I missed out last WordCamp India, but I had a feeling of being right there, at the event, by following #wci on twitter. Thanks to the amazing Live Tweets.
Again, I missed BarCamp Kerala 5, and was stuck before my PC at home. I knew a good share of the people at the event, still I didn’t get the feel of the event.
Why were #wci tweets so efficient and why were #bck5 tweets suck not so good?
Of course, BarCamp Kerala should not be compared with WordCamp India; BarCamp’s are loosely organized unconferences, whereas, WordCamp is a well coordinated, international event. Still, effective tweets would help convey the ideas presented at BarCamp’s beyond the walls of the room.
There was another BarCamp Kerala, last Sunday (11-Oct-2009) and I tried to fill up the gap this time by Live Tweeting the same, and as far as I know, it worked. Here is a brief Analysis.
How to Live Tweet an Event, Effectively
#1 Create a Dedicated Profile
You are going to have at least 500 tweets per event, so create a profile specific to the event. BarCamp Kerala uses @BarCampKerala for the same.
#2 Use a Hash Tag
This is obvious, you don’t need to be told this. Hash Tags make it easier to follow the related tweets. Choose a small, yet meaningful hash tag. BarCamp Kerala 6 used #bck6
#3 Everyone Loves Tips
We all love tips, a good share of the blogs just do that. People do not care much about what’s going on at the event, or who is on stage. But they always like to know what the speaker is saying about.
For e.g. Instead of Tweeting out event status like, “Mr. X on stage, he is speaking about Million Dollar Mosquito’s” over and over, do it once. then start tweeting what he is saying. Like, “Use Onion Peels to repel Million Dollar Mosquito’s – says @mr.x #mci”
Your followers would be more than happy to retweet the tips. From the point of view of an outsider, he gets some new info from the second tweet and not from the first. Doesn’t mean the event status tweets are unimportant, just don’t stick on to it for ever.
#4 Quotes Work Great
Tweepl really love to retweet amazing quotes. And you will find many quotes of wisdom from the talkers at any event. All you need is good typing speed and sharp listening skills. Tag them with #quote in addition to the hash tag of the event.
#5 Pass the Info
Before the start of the event, do these:
- Ask the attendees to follow the profile you have created for the event.
- Tell them about the hash tag and advice them to tag all tweets related to the event with the same tag.
- Request them to retweet relevant tweets related to the event.
- Request the speakers to revel their twitter username (a.k.a twitter handle) to the audience right before the start of their talk so that they can associate tweets related to his talk with his handle.
#6 Trend Setters need some serious work
I am told that, right now, there should be at least 3000 tweets to go trending. There would be other parameters like the no. of people involved and the relevance. Maybe Twitter has someone to hand pick the trending topics. (It was much easier in the early days, a chat tagged #AdsenseTalk with three of my friends went trending in about 2 hours.)
Try to convey the idea to the group right at the start of the event and ask them to tweet hard. if you have 30 people tweeting about the event, 3000 tweets shouldn’t be very hard. You can do that in an hour and I assume you would be trending. It’s your ultimate twitter advertisement, so I think its worth the pain.
It’s all fun, anyway!
#7 Third Party Clients Make it a lot easy
I use TweetDeck for most of my tweeting. One can create a search column in TweetDeck and list all tweets tagged the specific hash tag. Using similar clients will help you follow the event better and also makes retweeting easy.
Happy Tweeting. Live!
I am a WordPress product developer and creator of Image Attributes Pro. I am passionate about solving problems and travelling the world.
Tip: Tweetdeck lets you automatically append a hashtag to every tweet. This will help a lot during the live coverage.
Hey! Good to see you here.
TweetDeck saved my day at BCK6. It wasnt working first, and I had to used dabr initially. Tweeting via dabr was so hard. Then someone found a way to work TweetDeck and lo! we were all tweeting hard 🙂
The use of hashes is a great help when trying to follow a live event. Plus I love the idea of using quotes.
Quotes get the maximum Retweets, plus quotes are easy to catch!
Great tips Arun, BCK6 event live tweet was so effective.Eventhough I was sitting far away fromt the place I could capture the summery through streaming Tweets.
omg, you were following #bck6 ? I didnt even know. Thats so good to hear 🙂
great tips 🙂 yeah i remember how we got our adsense topic trending within 45 minutes… but the information overload on twitter has rev the limits high… last week an analysis showed that it took 2500+ when the other part of the world was awake… and took around 1700+ tweets at noon indian time… so that might be an hint that to get into trending topics make sure there is no breaking news competing with you 😉
anyway great post. tweeted it .
I see, the timing is important. But thats good for us, 1700 at noon is not that hard. We should try that again. Remember? How many new friends we got on that day. It was really amazing and totally fun. 1700, lets work on it someday 🙂
I would just like to add: tweet hard, yes, but tweet smart. Don’t tweet indiscriminately just so you can trend. Think quality as well as quantity.
Thats right. Plus, I think Twitter has a quality Assurance team that monitors our tweets before they decide whether to include it in twitter search or make it trend.
Thanks for dropping in!
Very good tips man – I am mostly bad at marketing what I am armed with LOL. Even at work as well 🙂
Remember you talking about the need to create an a/c in the name of the brand (DollarShower for me). I just did that though not planning to be active there.
Somehow, I am not somebody who enjoys the socnets much.
I was reserving some Twitter Profiles for my use that day, thats when I just tried out DollarShower and found it wasnt taken. I have already lost some handles, esp my nickname. Trust me, sometime later you are gonna enjoy the socnets and then you will find DS useful 🙂
Hi Arun,
Great ideas with nice example of @BarCampKerala
Thanks Albins 😉
Thanks Bro. There are some tips you have mentioned which i was unaware of.
Nice tips Arun, will definitely help in many ways. Use of third party client is very effective and speed up the process.
@Amal and @Sanjeev – Thanks for the comments 🙂
Hey arun, nice tips.
Recenly I attended blogger meet in mumbai and we were LIVE tweeting the event.
you can stil check it #indimum
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Thanks for this article and its 7 great points.
We’ve written 9 other tips for displaying a Live Tweet during your event here : http://blog.livetweetapp.com/how-to-live-tweet-event-organizer/
On the “Third Party Clients Make it a lot easy” side , I would suggest you to have a look at the features we’ve built at LiveTweetApp (http://www.livetweetapp.com).
I think it will bring you another vision of the Live Tweet. Let me know what you think about it.