Arabnet Arabnet

Many event organizers nowadays use Twitter as a primary platform to engage their audience, share useful insights and tap into popular interests.

Are you about to embark on a live tweeting quest at your upcoming event? Before you get your fingers moving, here are a few tips to aid you in your journey.

1. Stick to the official hashtag:

Needless to say, you should be using the event’s official hashtag in all your tweets to make your online contribution identifiable and stimulate conversations with fellow live-tweeters. Make sure you stick to the correct spelling as communicated by the organizers or else your tweets will not show up in the search results or appear on the event’s Twitter board (in case there is one).

2. Get the speaker’s Twitter handle right:

It is not always easy to figure out the speakers’ usernames when their twitter handles are not listed in the handouts or mentioned in advance by the organizers. So unless you’re a 100 percent sure of the twitter handle you’re employing, use the speaker’s full name for attribution.

3. Do NOT start your tweet with a Twitter handle:

When quoting a speaker, keep their twitter handle for the end or else the tweet will qualify as a reply and not show up on your timeline (unless you’re actually replying to one of their tweets). Now if you insist on starting with the handle, do include a full stop or a few introductory words before it to spare yourself the technical inconvenience.

4. Avoid rephrasing:

Live tweeting is one of the rare instances where your followers are mostly interested in what the speaker is saying and not in your personal input. If you’re unable to get a certain quote right, do not waste the next two minutes on rephrasing. You should rather pay attention to the speaker in order to capture their next statement accurately.

5. Focus on snappy, catchy statements:

Novel-length Twitter threads are a no-no. The majority of Twitter users are on the platform precisely for concise, straightforward and eventually “retweetable” content. Keep your complex philosophical observations for a later blog post.

6. Be careful with links:

When linking to a website or online service, the best formula is to start by a brief explanation of what the link is about followed by the link itself, and keep any personal observations or comments till the end as a way of accommodating Twitter’s character-limit.

7. Pay attention:

You can’t succeed in your live-tweeting task unless you’re all ears, all eyes and all hands. Avoid both external and psychological distractors and, most importantly, do not give way to extended daydreaming episodes (it will be hard to get back on track after one of those).

8. Follow other participants during the event:

Conferences and events are always an opportunity for you to increase your Twitter visibility by following other participants and attracting new followers. Take a few pauses every now and then to go through the Twitter board or search the event’s hashtag as a way of growing your online network.

9. Turn your Twitter interactions into real-life connections:

Do not limit your networking activity to social media platforms. You should rather use Twitter as a tool to facilitate real-life networking and not be fully-absorbed in your live-tweeting task that it takes away from face-to-face interations.

10. Do not indulge on side conversations:

Twitter is by nature designed to stimulate conversations. However, try to keep your conversations meaningful and adhering to the context of the event and refrain from trivial Twitter debates that mostly involve a lavish exhibit of your personal knowledge to score-points against other tweeters. Live-tweeting is not a cyber-battle of wits.

11. If you can’t get a decent picture, don’t:

You really don’t have to back up every single tweet with a picture, especially during a regular talk where nothing particularly spectacular is happening on stage. It is totally unnecessary to post pictures of the speaker/panel from all possible photographic angles. Take a couple decent pictures and spend the rest of your time focusing on what is being said instead.

12. Remember that it’s not about you:

As Arabs, we often tend to make things all about ourselves, always jumping at the opportunity to showcase our personal insight and expertise. However, as live-tweeters, you have to keep in mind that your duty is to promote the event itself first and foremost and capture essential moments. Good luck!