Hopefully you know a bit about getting around Twitter. For this post, I’ll assume you can use the search bar in Twitter, know that a hashtag is when there is ‘#’ followed by some words, and will either figure out TweetDeck if you want to use it (it’s pretty easy and useful) or just ignore the TweetDeck portion.
What is a Twitter event?
It’s not a tweetup. A tweetup is where you meet people in person.
A Twitter event is where you interact with others on Twitter for a certain range of time about a certain topic, with the organizers/hosts putting up questions for interested people to answer. A lot of them are around an hour. To get involved, you add the hashtag of the event to your tweets, so the people involved in the event can all be looking for the same hashtag to know who is participating.
(Twitter events are also known as “Twitter chats” and “Twitter parties”)
What sort of Twitter events are there?
All kinds. I help organize Travel Talk on Twitter, a weekly Twitter event at 9:30 AM and PM GMT where we ask 5 questions about a travel topic. This week’s is “Non-Tourist Travel”. Prior topics have been Food Travel, Solo Travel, Partner Travel, Time Travel, etc. It’s fairly unusual for a Twitter event to have two times in a day, but it seems to work for us. (I’ll keep talking about #TTOT in this post not so much to be pitching it, but more as a point of what I do/know. Everything is applicable to whatever Twitter event you choose to participate in.)
You can find people talking about any assortment of topics, from food and wine to parenting to agriculture, etc. Here’s a list from last year of some of the Twitter events that exist, just to give you some ideas of the variety.
This Google Doc is more extensive, but a bit messier. (Thanks to @mygo2it for the link.)
How do you participate in a Twitter event?
First two parts are pretty obvious: get a Twitter account and be online at the appointed time.
After that, it’s up to you how much you want to be deluged by tweets. A lot of people are fairly overwhelmed by the process, especially when they start. #TTOT has a few thousand tweets that go along with the hashtag, a decent portion of those from the event itself. (Sometimes, people will also use the hashtag of a Twitter event outside of the event to get the attention of the community.)
No matter what you do, you should have a search up in some way for the hashtag of the event, because that’s where you’ll be getting the questions and seeing everyone’s answers.
My usual setup for #TTOT is I have three Twitter tabs up in my browser:
- My full timeline, which shows everyone I’m following
- My mentions, so I know if people are talking to me
- A search for the hashtag itself, so I can see people participating in the event
Because I love overload, I’m also signed onto TweetDeck, where I have a #TTOT search as one of my Columns and have tweetgrid up with #TTOT searched for in their 1×1 grid.
For #TTOT, we have 5 questions, one every 10 minutes. I respond as I see fit to the questions. Some people write only one answer per question. I write whatever comes in my mind, which may take a few tweets.
When I feel like I’ve appropriately answered a question, I check other people’s answers and RT and respond to the ones that pique my interest.
When the event winds down, people tend to start giving thanks to people who they talked to or RTed them during the event and a lot of times will thank the hosts/organizers for putting it together.
Some tips:
- I think about blog posts, videos and Flickr pix of mine that I could link to that might pertain to my answers and include the links. TweetDeck is great for pix, links, etc. because you drag them into the box. The pix can be uploaded there and links will be automatically shortened (just click the link if you want them unshortened). Web Twitter is good when you’re responding to a tweet with multiple people, because the ‘Reply’ feature pops up all of the people mentioned in the tweet.
- #TTOT tends to go a bit over the time past 10 minutes after the last question, so you don’t need to feel like a Twitter event ends at a certain time. This morning, for whatever reason, I asked what songs people had stuck in their heads and people kept talking about that way after the last question.
- If you can plan to have time set aside for the Twitter event, with no outside distractions, great. If you can’t, that’s fine, too. A lot of people are at work during Twitter events and people would rather hear from them infrequently during the event rather than not at all.
- During the event, you might come in ‘late’ or miss a question. Don’t be shy about answering Question 1 even if people are on Question 3. If someone is interested, they’ll respond.
- If you missed a question or come in after it starts, you can generally do a search for ‘Q1′ (or whichever question you want) and the hashtag to get up to speed.
All-in-all, there are two wonderful things about Twitter events: First is the event itself. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, are the new friends you get to keep after the event ends. So make sure you throw the people you like a follow and maybe they’ll do the same.
One last note: If you ever get sick of a Twitter event, you can always block the hashtag. Here are some explanations on how.
Anything unclear? Lemme know. It’s always hard to get back into the mind of someone who is first starting out, so if something doesn’t make sense, that’s my fault, not yours. And if you have tips or things to watch out for that I’ve missed, please, add away.
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