Tips for Live Tweeting Your Next Event
Whether events are hosted online or eventually again in-person, live tweeting is a tool your organization can use to engage people in conversations about or significant to your work.
Live tweeting can break your organization’s news or position you in discussions. Events you are attending or hosting are a great entry point for expanding your audience or building your social media presence.
Last month, we helped the American Society of Civil Engineers with its virtual summit, announcing the 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. Our involvement included live tweeting the event from the handle @ASCEGovRel. After the six-hour event, the handle received over one million impressions and drove over 2,000 clicks to the infrastructure report card website. We love helping clients get the word out about their events, and live tweeting a six-hour event was a moment to let our Twitter knowledge shine.
Below are our tips for helping you meet your goals on Twitter, whether you’re tweeting from your organization’s account or as an event attendee.
Prepare in Advance
Twitter as a platform can help you break news and document events in real-time. Preparing before live tweeting will help you stay organized during the event.
List out the speakers and their Twitter handles and the hashtags relevant to the event.
Having this information ready before you live tweet will save you time and help you tweet out quotes and content quickly.
Gather photos, graphics, and links that can enhance your tweets.
If you have photos or graphics you can use, save them to a folder so they are accessible. Have the URL for the event available to share later and URLs to publications produced by your organization that cover the event’s concepts. You can limit the characters with a URL shortener like Bitly.
Craft a few tweets before the event.
If you know the schedule of events, create a few tweets about anything you know will happen, including information on a speaker or an announcement. If videos of speakers are available, write out quotes before the event so it is easier to tweet when they air.
Below are some examples of tweets you could prepare.
Quotes from speakers or presenters
Questions, polls, or call to actions related to the event
Photos and videos from the event
Retweets of event speakers
How to Recognize a Good Quote
A good quote is succinct and says something that would resonate with the audience using one of the rhetorical appeals: ethos, pathos, or logos. Knowing the difference between the appeals will help you recognize a good quote and tweet it out in real-time.
Below is a list of the appeals and an example of each.
Ethos: Using ethos, the speaker claims they have personal experience with the issue they describe.
“The federal government needs to know every utility needs funding for water infrastructure. I’ve worked with water utilities across the country, large and small, and their pipes are breaking.”
Pathos: Using pathos, the speaker supports appeals to the listener’s emotions through evocative words.
“Investment is increasingly critical. Thousands of people in the Navajo Nation travel miles for water and lug barrels upon barrels home. We should be embarrassed our fellow Americans are living in these conditions.”
Logos: Using logos, the speaker supports an argument with solid facts, statistics, and logical evidence.
“America must invest. If trends continue, the annual infrastructure investment gap will grow to $136 billion by 2039.”
When to Paraphrase a Quote
When you can, tweet a direct quote to keep the language of the source. But you might not always have space or can type word for word. Paraphrase by taking away unnecessary words for the core message.
For example, a long quote would be:
President of Small Utilities Esther Small says, “I’ve always said this, and I will continue to say it, that despite the fact that small utilities are in dire need of funding and that water is essential to every single community and every individual, the federal government is not showing us it values water because it won’t give us the funding we need.”
Instead, you could paraphrase and tweet:
President of Small Utilities Esther Small says the federal government is not showing small utilities it values water because it is not providing the funding needed. She says water is essential to every community and individual.
After Live Tweeting
After live tweeting, take time to assess how it went. What went well, and what could go better next time? Review your Twitter analytics and note the best-performing content and what made them perform well. Keep your notes available for the next event so you can replicate success.