This week, I attended a vendor event. It followed several Gartner events where the attendees used Twitter as an additional channel to experience, participate and make the event their own. What I find significant is that in the course of about a year, microblogging during events has become de rigueur.
Admittedly, not everyone attending an event tweets and not all tweets come from people who are actually at the venue. People interested in experiencing the event who cannot be physically present get a window into the key points and impressions of those who are there.
So after watching the tweet stream, here are a few things I have learned.
There are three types of microbloggers:
• Most people microblog about the points that resonate with them. They highlight key points made by a speaker, the people they meet or they just make general observations. Most often the tweets are positive.
• Some people will (shamelessly) self-promote. These are the people – often times working for vendors – that want to make sure you know they are there. They may take a point a speaker makes and direct attendees to their booth at the show or simply let others know something about their activities.
• Only a small percentage of microbloggers will make snarky comments. This is the biggest fear of most clients I speak with, that there will be a vitriolic stream of microblogs criticizing the speakers, the event or their company. In fact, this happens rarely. When it does happen, the snide comments speak volumes about the microblogger. When taken in context with all the other positive comments, they stand out as just a bit of nastiness.
Another thing I learned is that the collective kicks in quickly. Again this week I saw that when someone steps out of line, the collective will ‘call it.’ If someone proffers incorrect information or makes a comment that is inappropriate, other attendees step up and make a correction.
Organizations of all shapes and sizes are figuring out how microblogging fits into their marketing strategies. What is clear that microbloggers should not be ignored.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Tweets that mention What I learned about Twitter this week -- Topsy.com // Nov 13, 2009 at 5:32 am
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2 uberVU - social comments // Nov 13, 2009 at 9:25 am
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by NeilAdam: What I learned about Twitter this week http://bit.ly/uNjxs [I rarely tweet Twitter articles, bt thought good comment here re conference use]…
3 VMaryAbraham // Nov 13, 2009 at 9:51 am
Carol -
You’re right, microblogging events has its own rules and the collective enforces them. The net result is a positive, richer experience for those who attend and those who follow via Twitter. I’ve now microblogged two events (LegalTech NY and ILTA09) and found the experience greatly enhanced my appreciation for the events. And, it spawned some wonderful conversations with folks who followed long distance.
Any event organizer who doesn’t facilitate microblogging is missing a terrific opportunity to expand the reach of their event.
- Mary
4 Richard Petersen // Nov 13, 2009 at 10:14 am
In my experience, there seem to be two types of tweets from a conference or industry event. One is an outward-bound “micro-live-blogging” activity by people, for their followers who aren’t attending the event. (”So-and-so just said “). The second type of tweet is directed to others in the event, to spark a parallel discussion, much like an IRC channel. (”I’d like to know where those data came from.” etc.) One of the challenges of using Twitter at an event is that the two modes are intermingled, so outsiders are confused by the second type of tweet (”what data?”), and insiders have to extract the conversation from the deluge of redundant reportage.
5 John Jainschigg // Dec 4, 2009 at 1:08 pm
@Carol: This dovetails exactly with what we see in immersive environments (e.g., Second Life), where open text-chat is used freely during voice-mediated events. Most comments are to-the-point — the overwhelming majority are civil – and audiences self-police very effectively. Even better results (more coherent dialogue, higher levels of civility) are obtained when the presenter(s) is/are aware of, and responsive to the chatstream. This works on Twitter, too — presenters at SXSW who begin by identifying themselves as Twitter users and proffering hashtags to identify the event/session seldom report problems.
@Richard: Aggregating too much chat or too many Tweets from too many places is problematic, both in terms of creating a readable ‘conversation’ and in terms of moderation. As an alternative for use around real-world and virtual events, we’ve been noodling various formulations of a multimode chat system that exploits Twitter on the inbound and outbound sides as an API, but doesn’t put the show organizer in the (sometimes uncomfortable) position of throwing a free-range Twitter stream up on the wall during an event.
6 Carol Rozwell // Dec 4, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Thank you John and Richard for your comments. What is becoming evident is that we need a new role at events. As a presenter, I need to focus on delivering a message and I need a buddy who can help identify issues that show up in microblogs. It’s also important to have someone monitor the chatter for the entire event and respond to questions quickly.
7 Carol Rozwell // Dec 4, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Mary, I can endorse your enjoyment of tweeting during events. I find I listen more intently and have a record of what points I thought were significant.
8 Timo Elliott // Jan 6, 2010 at 2:41 am
Carol,
Just fyi, I put together some tools to help presenters include Twitter into the “presentation experience” — they let you show live tweets in powerpoint, “AutoTweet” out the main points you’re making as you go through the presentation, and use Twitter to ask polling questions:
http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/powerpoint-twitter-tools/
Regards,
Timo Elliott
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