This is what you want more of
Want to offer value to your Twitter followers while increasing their quantity and quality? Live tweeting a seminar or webinar provides your followers with helpful information while letting others in your niche know that your feed is a good source for high quality information about their niche, enticing them to follow you as well.
For those of you new to Twitter, live Tweeting is when you tweet about something while it happens. You can live Tweet any event, from the ill considered, like a funeral, to the fun, like your favorite tv show.
You’ll get the most value out of live tweeting if you live tweet an event related to your niche, or whatever it is you usually Tweet about. If you usually Tweet about baseball, your followers won’t get a lot of value out of your live-tweeting an SEO webinar. Similarly, the webinar attendees won’t necessarily want to follow someone who usually tweets about baseball.
Your best bet is to pick an event within your niche, attended by the type of people who could get value out of your tweets going forward, because they are exactly the kind of people you want following you.
This is how people usually live-tweet seminars and webinars. They obtain the event’s hashtag, generally supplied by the hosts. Then they Tweet the presenters’ insights with the hashtag appended. Usually it’s word-for-word or close to it.
But here’s where you can go one better. Instead of just repeating exactly what the presenters say, which is what everyone will be doing, summarize their thoughts. Make statements stronger, punchier; hyperbolize a little bit. Here’s an example of a Tweet during my last webinar that got retweeted 24 times.
The text: “Social media doesn’t just help content rank, it compels people to click through when they see their friends shared it. #mozinar”
Why did this get retweeted so much? One, the audience found it useful. Many of the people following this hashtag have social media responsibilities as part of their jobs. Social Media professionals are constantly having to justify why they should get paid to play around on Twitter. This tweet explains how social media is important, helping content to rank in search engines and achieve higher click-through rates.
The second reason this got retweeted so much is because it says a lot in a few words. The presenter probably spend a good few minutes explaining this concept. I distilled it into less than 140 characters. People love that.
Here’s my process for rewriting presenters’ ideas. First, I take notes in Word or Google Docs as I watch the presenters. I’m also following the conversation in Twitter. I like to click on the hashtag and then save the search so I can write my tweets and watch new tweets appear on the topic in the same window. When the presenter says something worth remembering, I write it in my notes. I check to see if anyone’s tweeted the thought out better than I can. If not, I copy the whole thought into Twitter and try to rewrite it to come in under 140 characters with the hashtag in there too. Here’s an example. The idea is that if you’re not the first to publish your story, Google News isn’t going to feature it and you aren’t going to get a lot of traffic from it. So if you can’t be first, it’s probably not worth your time if your goal is traffic from Google News.
People love this stuff. Remember, you don’t need to dumb it down. It’s okay if someone who knows nothing about Google News wouldn’t understand your tweet. That person isn’t your audience.
Remember to thank people as they retweet you. You might get responses like “thanks for the great tweets,” which helps attract followers. And it’s just good twetiquette.
What have I missed? Any other good tips for live tweeting events, or any other reasons to do so? Let me know in the comments.
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