10 tips from @pistachio on using Twitter for events
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011
Laura Fitton, or @pistachio as she’s known on Twitter, has been referred to as the “Queen” of Twitter. Her mom-at-home to tech CEO Cinderella Story resulted in her founding www.oneforty.com and co-authoring Twitter for Dummies.
Laura Fitton, aka @pistachio
She is also credited with explaining Twitter’s business value to Guy Kawasaki and she’s been quoted in more than 100 national publications including the Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Newsweek. She’s been speaking professionally about the business use of Twitter since October 2007.
Recently she agreed to answer a few questions on how Twitter can be used for events.
1) How can you use Twitter to promote an event beforehand?
- tweet it out, encourage others to tweet that they are attending when they register.
- share content from and by the panelists and speakers who will be at the event.
- talk about attendees who will be coming and where they are coming from.
2) How can you use Twitter at events/ encourage attendees to use Twitter?
- provide an official #hashtag to use, and then mention it – repeatedly – on stage.
- have large display screens throughout the event facility displaying all tweets that use the official #hashtag. many great apps for this.
- explain they can text “join to 40404” to start a Twitter acct – they can even
“fast follow” any Twitter acct by texting “follow pistachio” to 40404
3) How can you use Twitter for an event after it’s over?
- thank attendees, connect them to each other as much as possible, and keep the channel open.
- good ideas for content between events – link to stuff being done by
attendees or speakers, RT attendees, write about progress towards next
year, tweet out photos, videos & blog coverage of the event
4) What’s the proper etiquette for Twitter use as events wind down?
- thank people for coming, send out links to the videos and presentations from
the event, keep folks engaged between events with good blog content - remind people about staying in touch with each other, etc.
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7 Responses to this article
Very valuable. Well written. Thanks.
This is a great post, packed with lots of useful tips. I also would say you could help people connect before hand so if there traveling they can tweet ahead of time get to know eachother.
Thanks so much for the comment, David!
I’m actually bummed when I attend events that don’t have hashtags now. I feel like I’m missing out on something… These are great ideas. I love the pre-event content sharing. It’s about more than just sell sell sell tickets. Thanks for the tips!
Thanks very much for stopping by, Adrienne.
Great advice … and I think talking about Twitter etiquette is really important. Thanks.
Ya forgot to mention that you could hire someone like an event correspondent to take care of capturing the content and promoting the event, speakers, sponsors prior, during and after the event! Slidedeck: http://vsb.li/ML07OQ