Six Tips For Twittering Live

Poynter Online writer Amy Gahran recently published a handy guide to using social media for live event coverage.

Gahran’s post has plenty of useful tips on how to use Twitter as a live-feed reporting tool, here are some of her recommendations:



1 - Create A Dedicated Account

“This will keep rapid-fire posts from overwhelming your regular followers. Configure this account to see ‘@ replies’ sent to you from any Twitter user.”

2 - Notify Regular Followers

“Just before you begin live coverage, post a tweet to the Twitter account you use on a daily basis that says, ‘I am about to begin live coverage of [event title].’”

3 - Keep Both Accounts Open

Gahran suggested using applications such as Twhirl which enable Twitterers to keep multiple accounts open.

4 - Deploy Hashtags

“A hashtag is a short character string preceded with a ‘#’ sign that serves as a tag denoting that your tweet is related to that event.

“When several people at an event include the same hashtag in their tweets, searching for that hashtag becomes an easy way to see all of their coverage simultaneously.”

5 - Have A Plan B

“Set up a corresponding live-coverage account on Friendfeed …then configure that Friendfeed account to republish everything from your live-coverage Twitter account.”

6 - Make Plan B Public

“Tell your Twitter followers about Friendfeed. Then post a tweet or two pointing to your Friendfeed page.”

The full post can be found on Poynter Online's E-Media Tidbits blog.