Twitter Tips for Community Managers at Events

It’s always a good workweek when there is a little volunteer and learning time in the mix. A highlight of my week was attending the Communicators Conference, an annual event co-hosted by the PRSA Portland Metro Chapter and OCIABC. In addition to the luxury of a day to spend on professional development, I assisted with monitoring and managing the conference’s Twitter feed throughout the sessions.

Although events often punctuate our worklife on Twitter, much of our team’s effort on social networks revolves around how to keep day-to-day content fresh and exciting for followers in between special events. So it was educational in itself to watch how usage of Twitter unfolded throughout the course of just one day and what type of presentations and speaking styles prompted the most tweets.

Here are some tips for community managers who find themselves live at the helm of a Twitter feed at an event:

1. Housekeeping. Monitor for questions at the start of the event and session starts. I noticed that the most questions I experienced were at the beginning of the day, and usually about “getting settled,” such as how to connect to the venue’s Wifi. Prompt responses on Twitter helped generate goodwill among the more active attendees.
2. Time event updates to optimize attendee views. I found that more attendees paid attention to CTAs and reminders on Twitter near the close of sessions, during lunch and networking opportunities, when they were more likely to check their mobile devices for updates.
3. Let attendees carry the news. It’s so powerful when third parties endorse you. Let users tweet the nuggets of insight from speakers, then retweet attendees on the event feed to recognize them for their effort.
4. Praise and give thanks. Although this sounds more like Sunday school than a business event, some of the most retweeted posts from the event thanked individuals for their contributions and praised good work.
5. Reward good behavior. At a recent event locally, organizers decided to reward the most prolific Twitter user with a small prize. That’s a great way to up your numbers among power tweeters at the event.
6. Benchmark. Run a Tweetreach report on your event hashtag at the end of the week (or pull your other event metrics) vs. the day of the event. That way you will be sure to include additional reach and impressions from follow-up conversation after the event.
7. Cross-promote. This sounds deceptively simple, but it’s easy to lose track of while you’re live at an event. A few well-placed tweets at lunch and during the networking hour about the organization’s Facebook page helped us boost our following considerably.