Digital Becca

Step one – preparation

• Gather all the information you can about the event or programme you’re covering
• Decide what period you’ll live tweet and moderate over
• For a fundraising event that might be all day
• For a TV programme or press event, it might be for its duration, plus an hour extra to catch up on questions and sign off
• Prepare any links and contact details you’ll need, including:
• The relevant hashtag
• Any statements we have on topics that might come up
• Any information articles we have on topics that might be covered
• Links to any bits of your site you want to include or point to

Add tracking to your links so we can measure the impact of your live tweeting:

• I have a guide to creating tracked links for more on setting these up
• Once you’ve done this you’ll have a series of short links which are specifically tied to your live event / programme
• Keep these in a document to refer to as you go along

Step two – let our audience know

• Live tweeting can be a great engagement practice for your audience
• Make sure they know it’s happening by tweeting the details before you start
• Encourage engagement as you go along to keep people interested in the topic

Step three – just before you start

• It can be hard to keep up with covering the live action and monitoring comments as they come in
• Luckily, some tweets will be generically related to the main issues and can be scheduled in advance
• You could do this using a programme such as Hootsuite
• In an hour’s TV programme, for example, you could aim to schedule three or four relevant posts that will allow you to focus on the bits that can’t be planned in advance

Tip: It’s best to make sure these tweets don’t look obviously scheduled, set them at random minutes past the hour if you can and avoid obvious stock marketing phrases.

Step four – live tweeting

Why we do it:

There are a number of reasons why we live tweet, including:

• Raising awareness of your charity and the issues you’re there for
• Engaging with your audience in new ways
• Reaching out to a new audience
• The opportunity to share information and resources
• To drive traffic to your website
• To influence discussions by sharing accurate and supportive information
• To provide signposting support to those reaching out
• As a live tweeter, your role is one of a social reporter, watching the programme or attending the event and sharing engaging insights with your audience
• People not able to be there or tune should get a good idea of what’s happening, but also care about the topic by the way you’re presenting it

What to do:

• Prepare as much in advance as you can
• Describe what’s going on in a way that would make you want to attend the event or watch the programme yourself
• Ask questions, for example what people think about the issues being discussed
• Ask people whether they identify with what’s happening and to share their own experiences
• Share blogs you may have on the topics discussed
• Share powerful quotes from the programme or event as they happen
• Retweet other supporters who are engaging with the action or sharing things you think others might be interested in
• If you’re at an event, be creative and try to share images, videos and sound bites too

Monitor your mentions feed:

• Reply to anyone asking a question
• Give support to anyone needing it
• Retweet people who have an interesting perspective or insight
• Favourite people whose engagement you enjoyed

Step five – signing off

• Once the programme or event is over, the focus is reactive rather than proactive
• You’ll spend about an hour making sure everyone in the mentions feed has been responded to
• New tweets will come in as the programme or event ends, so it’s a good idea to capture these people before you go
• Once you’re happy, signoff, for example: “Thank you for watching xxx with us tonight, we’ll be back tomorrow. Take care, xxx at xxx.”

Step six – analytics

• Good live tweeting will have impacted your social and website engagement
• Remember to capture this the following day, develop insights and identify improvements