Using Twitter to Pwn an Event: Four Tips

This post builds on some tips from Nate Riggs on ensuring your next presentation becomes serious Twitter content. Using Twitter at an event back in 2007, I realized how handy it is for communicating offsite in real-time.

Twitter is very versatile at an event. It can help you optimize your time and get more out of the day. All you need is a device of your choice and some kind of Internet access. Here are four tips whether you are attending, presenting, or organizing an event -- or you can't leave your desk***. 

TwitterPoint: Wanna suck the energy out of the room at your next presentation? Launch into a lot of text-heavy slides. Or do the exact opposite and think in 140-character slides. I recently started out with a 140-character summary of my presentation. And then went on to explain and prove that summary.

Another good idea is to add Twitter Tips to the bottom of key slides, as @prtini does. Both approaches ensure you know the content. It also reduces the number of slides and the amount of text. The bonus is that it usually increases the number of folks sharing your content through live tweets. Don't forget to include the hashtag as part of the 140 characters. It also acts as a prompt to tweet.

Attend a Twitter Event: Twitter events are a great way to engage with like-minded folks via Twitter. And you can do it for free from the comfort of your own home/office/mobile device. No swag or name badge, but that's ok. Try out PR 2.0 Chat -- "it's a weekly conversation (Tues 8PM EST) that focuses on public relations 2.0 topics."

In addition to #PR2.0Chat, there are Twitter events for many different topics. Pick one and sit in on it. Listen, learn and engage with other folks. You'll learn something and you'll have a Tweet trail of content that can usually increase follows from like-minded individuals. More from Buzz Bin on different types of Twitter events.

Live-Tweet an Event: If you're attending a conference, you can take notes. Or you can live tweet. It generates a permalinked list of conference notes. And it's another great way to meet folks via Twitter, assuming you include the event hashtag. The secret to live tweeting is to expand your access to event content and your circle of friends and followers by using TweetChat. It filters out any tweets that don't have the event tag. And it automatically adds the event tag to your tweets. It helps manage the cacophony of your next Twitter event. You can tell if someone is using their Twitter stream to follow an event. It's tougher to expand your network this way, and using TweetChat gives you more options for re-tweeting someone else's comments. There have been a few times people have nailed a summary of an important point that I've retweeted during a conference. This is content I would not have seen in a timely fashion without TweetChat.

Bring The Gift of Twitter to an Event: Using Twitter as a back channel at events has been done for some time now. It's because it's easy, it's helpful and it also encourages people to tweet. This public display of Twitter affection projects tweets using the event hashtag on a screen during the event. Beware of which site you use to do this. Inevitably someone in attendance or someone that sees the hashtag will revert to grade school antics and post something NSFW using the hashtag. So use a site like TweetRiver to filter or moderate.

A little bit of Twitter can go a long way at events. What are your tips for getting more out of events using Twitter? What should you avoid? ***There's never a good time to attend events. But they're like oxygen to you; you're continuing education and your network. Are you one of those folks that can "never seem to get away from the office?" Don't forget to breathe. On the flip side, don't hyperventilate. You've seen folks that seem to be at every single event. It seems like it's their full-time job...in that, they don't have a real job. So attend and learn. But then apply. And you'll revise and build based on your experience, then repeat.