By John Chen
I unknowingly became the #1 tweeter in Vancouver, BC at MPI WEC when I had no cell phone access and only WiFi. The side benefits were hyper-networking by meeting people and gaining fans and trust with people I didn’t meet. Here’s the top 10 tips from my experience.
1. Find Power - bring an extension card and a power strip and you’ll make a LOT of friends.
2. Connect to Wifi - When you walk into new venues, jump through the hoops to connect to wifi or bring your own if you can afford it, I’m a fan of the Sprint Overdrive now.
3. Setup Multiple Inputs - I set up my phone and my laptop with TweetDeck.
4. Tweetable Education - If it makes you go hmmm, then tweet it, great speakers have great quotes and facts and resources, tweet them.
5. One Note- I use OneNote, to take notes, then use Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Alt-Tab to switch to Tweet Deck and hit send, highly effective if you’re a fast typist.
6. Note Taking - I view Twitter as my new retention tool as a way for me to pay attention and document what I’ll remember.
7. Measure - look for websites like http://wthashtag and look for top 10 stats or Tweeters on your hashtag. Use power+circle on the iPhone to take a picture of your stats and then post that to make it a contest and prop those who are top 10 tweeters, they usually appreciate someone noticing!
8. Tweet pictures and videos - Learn functions like on iPhone to take unique photos on the floor and then tweet them, sharing the experience with others. Tweet funny details, wins and fails and give instant feedback to conference organizers if they are paying attention.
9. Hyper-networking - Make new friends during sessions by replying and re-tweeting info that you think is cool, they appreciate it and you get another tweet.
10.Tweetup - Create or help promote a tweet up (an impromptu gathering of people on twitter, some of my most valuable meetings to meet people more like me at conferences) gives you credibility for supporting social media and adding more tweets people want.
11. BONUS TIP! HootSuite / Scheduled Tweets - @hduckworth used this technique at http://mpicascadia.com, Before the conference starts, pre-set a collection of tweets (in this case about her session) to go off on the days leading up to the conference, this gives you a collection of tweets without even thinking about them, just set it and forget it! (Can you name that commercial?)
That’s it, while you think you may have nothing to say, just pay attention, use the goal of retention to help you keep aware during a conference and sharing to add to your marketing value and you can get known as the #1 Tweeter and gain tangible and intangible benefits for learning this new broadcasting skill.
John Chen is the CEO of Geoteaming and author of 50 Digital Team Building Games (Wiley).
http://blog.geoteaming.com/?p=34
