Those of you who follow me on Twitter have probably noticed that I live-tweet the conferences I go to. Extensively. Some people love it, some people hate it - but if you want to start live-tweeting for yourself, here are some things to keep in mind.
Why I Live Tweet
I started live tweeting events a couple of years ago, when I realized that I was spending as much time and effort tweeting out the most relevant points of the session I was in as I spent taking notes – plus, the notes I took were less relevant than my tweets, since I was only tweeting out the best parts!
Once I committed to live tweeting conferences, I got a lot of great, positive feedback about it from other attendees, so I kept on going. I’ve also gotten the bulk of my followers through live tweeting; it can be a great way to build your personal brand at conferences and get increased visibility with attendees and speakers alike. Live tweeting doesn’t just build your brand among attendees of the conference, either. People who are trying to follow along at home via the conference hash tag are often even bigger fans of quality live tweets.
There's a noticeable uptick in people who read my name badge and say “oh, you’re Ruth Burr!” at the end of a conference compared to the beginning (when they usually just say "nice to meet you").
@ruthburr Cheers for all the tweets, they are better than my notes, and much neater ;)
— Kingsland Linassi (@kingslandlinass) March 15, 2013
A big thanks for @ruthburr for live tweeting at #LinkLoveAppreciate it! :)
— Dennis Seymour (@denseymour) March 15, 2013
So that's nice.
Why You Might Not Want to Live Tweet
A few caveats before we get in to the nitty-gritty of quality live Twitter coverage:
You will lose followers. When I’m covering a conference, I’m tweeting multiple times per minute, all day. That can really blow up someone’s Twitter feed. I usually encourage my followers to mute me or the conference hash tag if they don’t want to be inundated, but some people just choose to unfollow – and some of those people don’t re-follow after the conference is over.
Here are my daily follow/unfollow numbers from the last 60 days, courtesy of Followerwonk:
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As you can see, I get the most new followers on days I’m live tweeting, but I get the most unfollows on those days as well. With the 31 followers I lost during SearchFest, my 54 new followers starts to look a lot more like 23. I'm still at a net gain of followers, but if you’re not prepared to (permanently) lose some followers (especially those who aren't in the search industry), live tweeting may not be for you.
It takes a ton of energy. Conferences can already be really draining, between the late nights, the "always on" networking conversations and the stress of trying to still get some work done while you’re there. Live tweeting takes a surprising amount of energy: the bulk of your focus needs to be on the session, not on the session + your work email + your slides for later in the day + Facebook. Tweeting live also means that even if a session is really boring or not at all useful to you, you can’t take a nice relaxing mental break and zone out or work on something more important.
You're reporting the news, not making it. That's something that can get lost in translation through retweets and replies. You’re going to get clarifying questions and dissenting opinions about things you didn’t even say (or necessarily agree with). No matter how many times you say “I didn’t say it, Duane Forrester did. I’d suggest asking him if you need more information,” some people are still going to get hung up on the idea that you’re the one advocating a particular position. It can get sticky.
You'll probably get rate limited. I usually end up unable to tweet for at least an hour per conference, because the Twitter API has blocked me for tweeting too many times in too short a period.
So! Caveats firmly in place, let's talk about:
How to Provide Value via Live Tweets
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Provide as much context as you can. Take this tweet from SearchFest:
Agility: Kinect was for games 1st, ppl hacked it, MSFT provided an SDK for ppl to build what they want @melcarson #searchfest
— Ruth Burr (@ruthburr) February 22, 2013
Just adding the word “Agility” to the beginning of the tweet puts the entire factoid into the context in which Mel was using it. This increases the ability for the tweet to be read and understood outside of the context of other conference tweets. Which brings me to: - Think about the retweet. Each piece of information you tweet needs to be able to survive on its own, independent of the tweets that preceded or followed it. When you get retweeted, the new audience viewing that tweet may not have seen your other tweets on the topic: make sure that tweet will make sense to them, too.
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Numbers are gold. When someone cites a statistic in their talk, tweeting the specific numbers they mention really increases the relevance of your tweet.
Sites that regularly post content w/video have 200-300% more new visitors and 2x time on page - key signs of relevance @thetoddhartley #SMX
— Ruth Burr (@ruthburr) March 12, 2013 - Don’t try to live tweet anecdotes. Speakers will often use illustrative examples in their talks, whether they’re passing anecdotes or full-on case studies. These can be extremely hard to live tweet. Remember to stick to the rules above. It’s OK to sum up a two-minute anecdote or case study into one or two tweets that are focused on the point.
- Capture as many URLs as you can. If someone includes a link on a slide, I’ll usually type that out first and then write the tweet context around it, in case they change the slide before I can write it down (this is especially important with bit.ly links). Want to go above and beyond? If someone mentions a great article but doesn’t include the link, Google the piece and provide the link yourself. That way you’re adding extra value with your tweets.
- Give shout-outs. Any time someone mentions a tool, tweet that out. If you know that company’s Twitter handle, include them with an @ mention. Do the same for people. People love hearing about new tools to use, and businesses and individuals alike love hearing they got a shout-out in a presentation. Doing this also gets you on the radar of people who might not even be following the conference.
- Watch the conference hash tag. In addition to tweeting out the session you’re attending, keep an eye on the tweets coming out of other sessions. When you see a juicy, highly-retweetable tweet come out, retweet it! Now you’re providing information on other sessions, too. Speaking of which:
- Use the conference hash tag and speaker handles. I usually end each conference tweet with the speaker’s twitter handle and the conference hash tag. It helps mitigate the “I don’t make the news, I just report it” factor I mentioned earlier, plus it’s important to give credit to where credit’s due. Most of the time I’ll just copy the speaker handle and hash tag from my first tweet and then paste them at the end of each tweet (be careful there aren’t any typos when you copy, though – I spent half of Marty Weintraub’s MozCon session accidentally tweeting him as @aimcear instead of @aimclear).
One tool I’ll often use for live-tweeting conferences is TweetChat. It allows you to track just the tweets coming from one hash tag, and will automatically add the tag to the end of every tweet you post from the tool.
Other than that, I don’t use many tools for live tweeting – I’m usually just using the Twitter app for Mac. I use keyboard shortcuts for “new tweet” and “post tweet” to save a bit of time.
The last thing you’ll really need to be able to live tweet a full conference is the ability to type very fast, with few mistakes, and without looking at your hands or, necessarily, the screen. I don’t have any good recommendations for tools/programs to use to learn to type faster; I learned to type really fast by getting in a lot of arguments with people over instant messenger in high school and college, so you could try that. If anybody has any suggestions for programs to hone your typing skills, I’d love to see them in the comments!
Happy live tweeting everybody!
Fantastic advice, Ruth.
Regarding losing followers, here's my two top tips to limit the potential damage:
1. Warn people in advance. Do a tweet saying something like "I'm off to a conference today, so apologies in advance for all the tweets today!" Maybe even give them permission to mute you! Things like Tweetbot let you mute people for time period (1 day, 1 week, 1 month)... So that way they don't get bombarded with all your tweets for the day but can resume following you as normal after the conference.
2. @mention where you can. @mentions (where it's at the start of the tweet) won't show up in your usual followers' timelines, but if you still use the hashtag, they'll still be seen by people following the hashtag, which is what you want. If half of your tweets end up being @mentions, you're reducing your tweets to your regular followers by 50%. This may not be possible, but even if it's 1 in 10, that's 10% less.
That said, after my first live-tweeting conference experience, I walked away with 50 new followers. I'm not sure if it was 50 gained and 0 lost or more like 70 gained and 20 lost, but hey... either way, 50 new followers, relevant to my industry and who obviously care about what I do and say at a later date beyond the conference! :-)
Oh and regarding hashtags, forgive the self-promotion but I discovered a way to eliminate the hashtag spam that often inundates conference hashtags with a bit of a clever Twitter tinkering. Hopefully people will find it useful the next time they attend a conference and the spam starts trickling in: A Trick For Stopping Event Hashtag Spam
Warning your followers is a way to reduce unfollows, and it's also just a courteous thing to do. I try to do 1-3 tweets before an event - the night before, the morning of, and right before I start.
Good thinking! No harm in saying "just in case you missed my other two tweets, I'm tweeting from a conference today..." - at the end of the day, people will be thankful for it!
You can also create new account specifically for live tweeting. Then just tweet on your regular account something like "I will live tweet from conference today. If you want, you can follow me on my other account".
This sounds like a good solution if you care only about the people that will be bothered by your tweets.
But live tweeting is more about the people who are interested in your tweets - if you use a separate tweeter account only at conferences, what will those followers get when you are not live tweeting?
You can occasionally tweet links to some good blog posts in time between two conferences :) It would take you one minute per day and you would provide some good stuff to your followers.
I've seen people do that if it's a personal interest (e.g. a sport - I know of two guys who've gone down this road with soccer and Formula 1 tweets) but I hadn't considered it for conferences. I don't know if I'd want to do it personally, but it's always good to think of all alternatives! :-)
Like the idea of @bojan that you should create a separate account for large number of live tweets. Plus your followers will be only those who wants to listen and engage with you. Tweeting a warning won't stop your followers from receiving large number of tweets that will fill their feeds.
Not only warning won't stop your followers from receiving many tweets, but many of them won't even see warning.
First of all, thank you so much for being a dedicated live tweet reporter and also thank you for sharing your experience, Ruth.
I agree with Bojan’s idea of creating a new account for live tweeting. You can always direct/ link your audience from the main account to the live tweeting account. This way, followers can check out the content of the conference after the conference/ live tweeting section ends. Furthermore, if the readers don’t have to follow this account to get the information, no one will get mad about having their feed flooded.
Trang Lam from Powered by Search
Hey Ruth,
what do you think some of the advantages of live tweeting in comparison to live blogging, - quickly taking notes and placing them in a brand URL page?
Do you think engagement-wise, live tweeting is more effective and makes more an impact regarding the tweeter's level of value provision and industry advocacy?
I think they can both be really valuable. It comes down to audiences - different people want to consume content in different ways. Live blogging is a great way to avoid the follower loss and feed blowout that can happen with live tweeting, but it also sacrifices some immediacy. Some readers prefer one, some prefer the other. The nice thing about live blogging is that it's content that can live longer than tweets can. The nice thing about live tweeting is, as you point out, the level of engagement and conversation you can get going. I think there's plenty of room for both, I just happen to prefer Twitter.
What I'm really interested in seeing is how we can start doing live coverage of events on Google+ - I haven't really seen anybody start to tackle that yet.
i think one method would be breaking between shows and just flipping on one's ipad video. :)
i'm going to mozcon again this year. I might just happen to go up to some and candidly ask them what they're thinking of the events. I've seen Shure do this a couple of times with his no board.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my question, Ruth.
I love live tweeting, especially during sporting events, as a fan. And yes, you will definitely loose followers, especially when you are a fan of a team which does not perform consistently!!! Weekend is not coming fast enough :-)
The good thing here is that only true fans will remain your followers :)This would show who really likes your team and who likes their winning streak!
Ruth, as people here are generally interested in hearing good stuff from conferences, it would be very interesting to see how many new followers you will have after writing this post :)
Great post Ruth! I never thought about the retweet as you put it. Using a standalone word or phrase to help ppl who haven't seen the other string of tweets. I never tried live tweeting, but it seems like a really good idea and a great way to make new connections!
Ruth,
Do you ever delete your live tweets seconds after you post or do you feel that it is all part of the process? Also, how opinionated or critical do you get? In your opinion, are you just reporting the news or are you adding an insight?
Really the only time I delete tweets is if I accidentally post a partial tweet - then I'll delete that and post the full tweet.
When it comes to conference tweets I don't get very critical at all. If it's something I really like or do already, I might add "GREAT tip!" or "I do this all the time & love it." I might also add e.g. "you can do the same thing on x other platform," type of thing, to add some value that way. If somebody says something that I don't agree with, or gives a tip that I wouldn't in good conscience recommend to my followers, I usually just don't tweet it out.
Ruth, Thanks for responding and sorry for the late reply. Last question - do you stress about quoting speakers and getting it exactly?
I don't, usually because I don't have the characters for an exact quote. If I'm quoting exactly I'll usually put it in quotation marks - otherwise, I'm paraphrasing.
Awesome post and really solid data to back up your advice...... Thanks
Hi Ruth, nice post. Using twitter and other powerful media effectively for website promotion is great idea and using full resources like re-tweets, mentions, replies etc are really some steps above. Thanks for the post
No one -- and I mean NO ONE -- live-tweets a conference like you, Ruth. You're extremely generous with your time and energy and make the rest of us feel like we're right there with you at the event. Thanks for going the extra miles to share all your learnings with us!
Oh thanks so much, Jon! What a nice compliment. The "right there with me at the event" feeling is exactly what I'm going for :-)
It's a tough one - Ive lost followers by live tweeting at conferences and events because its not relevant to a proportion of the following and they just get annoyed. On the other hand some great stats that get the retweets can score your new ones.
You can only hope to gain more than you lose but good tip from Stevie with a courtesy tweet up front. Great post with loads in interesting things to look at.
I can see where you'd both gain and lose a ton of followers to the Wonk chart makes perfect sense to me. If you're not at a conference and it's all people are talking about over & over all day, it's not related to your day or your life. But then again, if you're at a conference, #eventtagging is *awesome* for following the conversation and the event as it happens.
Good post - lots to think about!
I've often thought "Hey, live-tweeting would be a great way to take notes!" But, see, I'm a guy, and I can't multi-task. And so while I'm typing those 140 characters, and trying to make sure I've got the right @'s and #'s on it, I'm not listening to what's going on. I feel like I'll surely miss something I'd RATHER tweet about! :)
Fantastic advice thanks for the info.
Great post!
RuthBurr
Conferences are vast habits to exercise live tweeting both behaviors, to afford information or if you can't focus to study impressive from additional.
While live tweeting doesn't fit for everyone. It's a great new way to increase engagement with your followers.
Great post! I have done quite a bit of live tweeting. We utilized it at the Chamber of Commerce regularly. We found it a great way to tap into the followers of the speakers we were featuring and to provide timely snippets of information to the business owners who could not attend the live event.
I always take notes also. There are some little bits of information or quotes that you just don't want your followers to miss out on. Although those aren't technically live, the underlying theme is to bring value to your followers or the brand. I usually have two devices set up and follow the hashtag in a new feed on Hootsuite.
you have covered almost all the points, accurately written post.
Live Tweeting is a tricky topic. Occasionally it's okay but if it happens a lot I unfollow. I wish Twitter had more controls for how we follow or a Google Plus circles like feature.
Live Tweeting = Multitasking^2
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Interesting, some articles that I have read on this subject are not so complete, but this post has helped me a lot, thanks for the information you have given us
Great post! I bet you could tweet all day at those Conferences & Events!
Great article Ruth! I shared it at https://www.empowernetwork.com/stuburdette/For newbies like myself this information is so valuable to learn :) Thanks!
Good content. I probably will not get into live tweeting, but the knowledge is good to pass on to someone that could be interested.
Thanks Ruth, I love your conference tweeting as it conveys the messages so well in the 140 character limit. There are some great tips in here and ill be applying some of it to my future tweeting.
Wow, talk about real expert shit (RES). Ruth is the best conference live tweeter ever. Her SMX West live tweets brought so much value to me and people on my team. I'm going to implement your strategies here during your talk at MozCon, since it would be highly improbably for you to give killer talk + live tweet like a champion.
That is so nice, Dan, thank you. I'm actually not speaking at this year's MozCon - we try to keep the Moz employee/non-Moz employee ratio pretty even - but it's true, even I can't live tweet my own talks.
fantastic post, thing to remember too is it's not just for conferences this works it's all events :)
Great article. Conferences are great ways to use live tweets both ways, to provide info or if you can't attend to learn something from others.
Personally I am not a huge fan live tweeting most of the time unless the supporting website has some good data to support it. But I still think if there it can be of use and that is why the mute button exists in the first place and as several people said if people bail they weren't that loyal in the first place.
I think though the added value in the tweet has to be there and that is the challenge of it. I think perhaps integrating more detailed commentary from Google+ might help here - so Tweet + short link to Google+ with some of your own thoughts to add Google+ blogging to micro blogging - interesting recipe?
Intriguing! I'll have to experiment with that. Thank you!
Great post and really solid data to back up your advice. I reallllly hate live tweeting tho :/
Thanks for the info. I do not attend that much conferences as you do, but do attend press conferences and events and concerts, and I definitively will have good use for your tips.
Thanks for the post! We recently used live tweeting at an industry event we hosted, and it was a great success! Definitely something we're going to do more of in future.
Thanks again for being so helpful at the event, it was great to read the #linklove posts during the event in London and gave me a great resource to look back over to remind myself of all the great tips I learned.
LinkLove was SUCH a quality event. My typing fingers were tuckered out by the end of the day! I'm glad you found my tweets useful.
These are really good and nice tweet like a pro. lol
Hi Ruth... Nice information about Tweet I got from SEOMoz Blog.... in my opinion I never want to live only with tweet! :( .... as I have seen there are only followers matters, lot's of peoples in India not active for Tweeting all the time, even they can write "Status Update on FB " anytime :P .. What You would like to say on this?
Thanks you very nice much