Our Top 10 Tips for live tweeting
Time to read: 3 minutes
Sandra Vogel, editor-in-residence, issues her survival guide for live tweeting.
For context:
- 500 million tweets are sent every day
- 5,787 tweets are sent every second
- 326 million people use Twitter every month
There are some more mind-blowing stats here.
Now, of course, we’re not all exposed to every tweet. But sometimes, it is necessary to tweet on behalf of a client, and these are useful stats to bear in mind.
Here are two more:
- The half-life of a tweet is approximately 24 minutes. If people haven’t read your tweet within half an hour, then the averages suggest they are not likely to get to it. A tweet gets half of all its interactions within half an hour of posting.
- Tweets with an image get 55% more engagement. So, the image can matter even more than the words.
Nowhere is tweeting for a client quite so important and quite as stressful as when you are live tweeting an event. A lot will be riding on your work because live-tweeted events can deliver great profiles and original and interesting content. Events can be fast and furious, and staying on top of everything is difficult. You only have one opportunity to get things right.
10 things to do before you go live
Get the detailed insider version of the event programme
Include any special announcements or launches that the public won’t be privy to till they happen. You can pre-prepare a tweet or two with appropriate images so you are not caught on the hop.
Know exactly who is speaking on stage at every moment
Prepare a file that includes their name – spelt correctly – their job title in full, and their various social media handles. Include any nuggets of info that might be useful for a tweet. Make this file easily accessible at the event so you can flick in and out of it when you need to.
Get the lowdown on any special announcements during scheduled sessions
If awards are given, get the list of winners, nominees and runners-up – whatever will be announced live. Get photos of the people in case it’s not possible to obtain live shots at the time. Pre-write your posts so they are ready to check through and fire off as announcements are made.
Get as many graphics as you can
Are there slides from presentations that will be useful in a tweet? Get them. You don’t need to have a post prepared and ready for every image, but the images may prove useful when you are live tweeting. Especially if it is tricky getting live photos.
Prepare at least one tweet for every session you are covering
You might not use it on the day, but then again, it might just be what you need to get you out of a problem moment.
Sort out your hashtags
Several hashtags will likely be used throughout the event. Agree on the list with your client and anyone you expect to be tweeting the event live from the client side. If some hashtags must be used in particular sessions, note that beforehand in the document you use to store the speaker details. Keep it structured so it’s easy to find what you need when you need it at speed.
Set some standards for language and tone
The client may already have established words or phrases. Make sure you are aware of them, and if you think you might lose touch with them in the heat of the moment during the event, put them in your handy reference document. Agree on the use of punctuation (exclamation marks are the domain of 13-year-olds, not professionals), any acceptable or non-acceptable abbreviations, any words that are never to be used and so on.
Have an open discussion with the client about logistics
Who is tweeting, what are they tweeting, and how will you divide and conquer? When are you going to get your breaks? Sometimes, a client is looking for back-to-back live session coverage. Is that practical? Plan your schedule carefully. You can’t be in two places simultaneously, so where will you be? If two or more sessions running at the same time need to be live-tweeted, how is that going to happen? Get full sign off on the schedule.
Do you need access to a backup person?
Or even two? Maybe back at the office, who you know will be on hand to do whatever you need, from double-checking facts to doing on-the-spot research or taking over from you if there is an emergency?
Set things in place to head problems off before they happen
Preparation will help you deal with on-the-day problems either because you’ve already thought of them, so they’re not problems at all, or because the process of all that preparation has given you added confidence that you can handle anything.
