An Introduction to Live TweetingAn introductory guide to Live Tweeting and how to succeed at it.

Contents

The Basics The Rules Types of Tweets

Tools & Apps Analytics

The Process Follow Up

Glossary Conclusion

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Introduction

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Live Tweeting Introduction

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Twitter is an information network made up of 140-character

messages called Tweets. It's an easy way to discover the

latest news related to subjects you are interested in.

Following the insightful tips in this ebook will ensure that you

have enough of a grasp on livetweeting that in practice, you

become a livetweeting ninja!

Owethu Makhathini

Chapter 1

The Basics

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The Basics

B b TOP TIP: Remember the 5 W’s: Who, what, where, when and

why. Your live tweeting should start by you describing who

you are- either yourself or the brand you are representing,

where you are tweeting from, what the event is actually

about, what the atmosphere is like and showing others why

they should be interested in what you are covering.

5W’sWho?When?What?Where?Why?

Live tweeting can be beneficial in a multitude of ways

depending on the intention behind it.

Live tweeting can be used for:

.Even to overthrow a dictator as we saw with the Arab Spring in 2011.

Entertainment Sports Politics

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The Basics

B b Correct device(s)In order to tweet effectively, you need to have these

devices.

Do not leave the house without fully charged gadgets,

your charger and your personality.

It does not matter how brilliant your tweets, powers of

observation and lightning fast your wit is if your battery is

low. Take heed.

n JjMobile & Tablet devices PC & Laptop

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The Basics

B b Create a memorable bio

Bio: A short personal description of 160 characters or fewer

used to describe who you are on Twitter.

It is important to include everything about yourself/business

in the bio, this includes accolades or awards and clearly

stating who you are and what you do. Be sure to include a

link that you can track.

A bio can also be tongue-in-cheek and show some personality.

TOP TIP: using the background of your Twitter profile is great for marketing purposes.

The Basics

B b Discover sources

The Twitter journey only really begins when you

discover the sources that will add the most value to

your Twitter experience

Following people in the same industry,

businesses/people you admire, public service

accounts and people you know is a great start.

Chapter 2

The Rules

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The Rules

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Twitter can be a fun and informative place but in order for

the platform to be accessible for all, certain rules have to be

followed.

You are not allowed to:

• Impersonate

• Threaten violence

• Publish private information

• Infringe copyright

• Phish

• Spam

• Pornography

For more information visit the official Twitter help site.

http://bit.ly/1iyKB1n

The Rules

The Rules

B J Appropriate punctuation There's no one perfect way to define appropriate

punctuation on twitter.

Using Brackets

Brackets aid in clarifying the intention and content of the

tweet. A link or YouTube link needs to be in brackets in

order to notify your followers of the source of the content.

Single Quotation Marks = Italics

Twitter does not allow for text formatting which makes

italics impossible. On Twitter single quotation marks take

the place of italics in order to be grammatically correct.

Follow the quirky and funny @APStylebook for daily tips on style, grammar and usage.

Chapter 3

The Types of Tweets

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The types of tweets

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Reporting

Verbatim

Refers to additional information that is related to the topic previously shared by speaker eg: previous interviews, blog posts ect.

Commenting on the atmosphere of the event. Filling people in on what is happening.

There are different types of tweets you can use at an eventdepending on the l event you’re covering and whether its froma personal or professional account.

Refers to tweeting word for word. This involves tweeting exactly what the speaker is saying exactly as it comes out.

The types of Tweets

The types of tweets

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Crisis Management Live tweeting can get pretty hectic with mistakes happening.

From mentioning the wrong person to tweeting obscenities.

Here is how to fix it.

1. Timing: tweeting a tweet late. When the moment has

passed, let it.

2. Make sure that the account you were tweeting from is

the right account if tweeting from a business account,

especially.

3. Mention: make sure you are using the correct handle to

mention the relevant people.

When you have made a big error be sure to respond to it

• In time

• With care

• Be open

• Be honest

The option to deleting a tweet is not so simple. Deleting a

tweet may look suspect if people notice. The best thing to do

is acknowledge the mistake and apologize before things get

out of hand.

Chapter 4

Tools & Apps

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Tools & Apps

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Tools & Apps

You can make life a little easier for yourself when live

tweeting at an event by using a monitoring tool

like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to track hashtags and key

phrases.

Grouptweet is a fantastic tool to use when there is more

than one person tweeting on one account for the same

event.

Bitly - Bitly is a URL shortening and bookmarking service

owned by Bitly, Inc., a Betaworks company.

Chapter 5

Analytics

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Analytics

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Tools & Apps

Analytics are extremely beneficial for tracking hashtags,

keywords and users making your live tweeting event run as

smoothly as possible.

Topsy is a social search and analytics company based in

San Francisco, California. The company is a certified

Twitter partner and maintains a comprehensive index of

tweets, numbering in hundreds of billions, dating back to

Twitter's inception in 2006.

Twitalyzer provides one-click access to the richest body of

metrics for Twitter accounts available today. By combining

basic Twitter measures with demographic data, widely used

metrics like Klout, and our own proprietary scores, Twitalyzer

is a "one stop shop" for all of your Twitter analytics needs.

Analytics

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Tools & Apps

Viralheat is a social management platform that empowers

enterprise businesses to use the social web to listen and

learn about customers in order to build meaningful, deep,

and relevant business connections across multiple social

networks.

Sprout Social is a social media management tool created to

help businesses grow their social media presence. The web

application integrates with multiple social networks where

consumers are engaging with businesses and brands.The

application also offers team or individual engagement and

publishing tools with in-depth analytics, brand monitoring,

competitive insights and social CRM features

Chapter 6

The Process

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The Process

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The Process

Research

Create a hashtag

Selective hearing

Focus

Judgement

Live Tweeting

The Process

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The Process

Research

The best thing you can do before embarking on the

treacherous path of live tweeting, is doing thorough research.

It is absolutely essential to know and understand the topic as

far as possible. This of course excludes livetweeting crazy

random occurrences happening on your way to work- that is a

whole other ebook.

Understanding the topic will enable you to effectively apply

‘selective hearing’ which will be further explained.

Create a hashtag

Creating a unique hashtag for the specific event makes it

easy to find and come up in searches where people have a

similar hashtag.

The Process

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The Process

Selective hearing

Everything about the event/ speech is important but not

everything needs to be tweeted. Once you understand that,

you are less likely to be overwhelmed. Capturing every single

word spoken is impossible and quite unnecessary. Based on

your research, you should be able to sift out what is important

and educational and pass on that information to your

followers.

Focus

This may sound very Rocky-eye-of-the-tiger-esque but it is

important. Live tweeting is engaging because it follows a

streamlined process. The key behind its popularity is

sequence. The event will follow a certain sequence and

breaking this sequence will be detrimental to your ‘flow’.

Adding pictures is acceptable if it follows along the sequence

of the event. It is important then to be focused on what is

happening in order to have the most accurate depiction of

events as possible.

The Process

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The ProcessJudgement

You have to decide which part of the event/ speech is most

likely to get engagement in the form of retweets, favourites

and replies. Certain things can be tweeted in order to add

context to the event but the focus should be on tweeting

retweetable/sharable content.

Analytics

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The Process

Tweeting at an event

It’s really exciting to live tweet an event, especially when

you notice other people getting involved, but remember you

have followers who aren’t there and might not be too keen

on their timelines being flooded with your tweets. This

applies if you’re tweeting from your personal account.

Tweeting at an event will gain you followers, but keep in

mind: saturating their timelines might turn others off.

Retweets are a great way to see that other people are

participating in the event. Save retweets for direct mentions

and accolades. You have a hashtag to make sure the

conversation is trackable, so there’s no need to retweet

everything that’s being said.

Retweeting everything will lead to newsfeed saturation and

loss of followers.

Chapter 7

Follow up

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Follow up

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Follow up

Not everyone who wants to engage in your live tweets will be

able to do so on the day of your event.

Having a hashtag means people will still be able to follow

and engage the conversation a couple of days after the

event. Be sure to maintain interaction.

Tools such as Tweetreach actually help you track hashtag

reach and lets you play around with other fun stats.

5 steps to twitter success

RepeatShareRetweetReplyFollow

Glossary

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Glossary

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Glossary

@ -The @ symbol is placed before a username to link to an

individuals profile. When a username is preceded by the @

sign, it becomes a link to a Twitter profile. It is known as a

mention

API - An Application Programming Interface. Contains all

Twitter data. Is commonly used to build applications that

access Twitter

Avatar - An avatar on Twitter refers to a profile photo.

DM - A DM or Direct Message is a private thread of tweets between two users

Favourite - Making a tweet a favourite means clicking on

the yellow star on the bottom of a tweet. This will go

directly into the favourites in your profile.

Glossary

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Glossary

Geotagging - adding your location to your tweet.

Handle - A handle is a Twitter users username. It is preceded

by the @ symbol.

Hashtag - The # symbol is used to mark keywords or topics

in a Tweet. One follows a conversation or thread of tweets

through hashtags.

Interactions - refer to engagement from other Twitter users

in the form of retweets, replies and favourites.

Retweet - A Retweet is a tweet that appears on your

timeline when someone forwards a tweet from another user

Trends - A topic / subject that is the most popular at the

time due to the amount of engagement. It is algorithmically

determined.

Conclusion

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Conclusion

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Conclusion

When you have finished with a session of live tweeting,

make sure to send a tweet acknowledging this. This

ends the event well and encourages people to share

their feelings about the event in order for you to

ascertain the true value the event had.

About ZA Social Media

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Your Strategic Social Media Business Partner

We are dedicated to help businesses acquire customers, retain profitability and stay ahead of competitors on social media.

If you are ready to transform your business with the help of social media,Please feel free to contact us or request a social media strategy audit for your Business.

Contact details

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Written by: Owethu MakhathiniDesigned by: Sandile Mayambala