By Cassy van Eeden

While live tweeting seems pretty straight forward – you tweet what someone says verbatim – it is how you use it that makes it powerful.

Preparation is everything

While pitching up at an event and deciding to tweet to your followers about it is great, just how effective is your live tweeting going to be if you haven’t prepared?

“By failing to prepare, we’re preparing to fail,” says Juraj Holub, marketing manager at sli.do, “The same goes for live tweeting.”

As Holub says, whatever the event or conference is, it can be overwhelming once you arrive, “and without solid preparation you might miss the most interesting content while searching for Twitter handles”, for example.

Karyn Maughan, legal journalist at eNCA and frequent crime and courts live tweeter, says, “I would advise people to really make the effort – before entering the Twitter narrative – to really know what they are talking about.”

Maughan adds that, as an audience, Twitter users are quick to pick up a lack of in-depth knowledge. “Read about it, understand it, know the key players and really grasp what is going on.”

Make sure that you are aware of the relevant hashtags, handles and the pertinent issues that surround what you’re tweeting about before you start out.

In the moment

One of the unique things about Twitter is the immediacy of your interaction with your audience. As soon as you send your 140 characters out into the world, not only can everyone read it, but they can respond in real-time.

Maughan’s advice is to only tweet when you are absolutely sure that you are being accurate. While you may want to be the first to tweet something, you might come away looking like a fool for getting it wrong.

“People will definitely punish you if you’re not accurate in conveying information about an event that they’re trying to stay on top of,” she says.

“You won’t be able to see every single tweet,” says lead writer for Hub Spot, Lindsay Kolowich. “But look out for questions you can answer, positive comments you can respond to – or favourite or retweet – and negative feedback you can address.”

Holub adds: “When you tweet ideas and quotes from speakers, always add their Twitter handles to attribute their authorship. If they’re not on Twitter, simply include their name in the tweet so you don’t confuse their ideas with yours.”

After all is said and done

Just because the event is over, doesn’t mean that you’re done. Twitter is an ongoing conversation.

“Don’t stop tweeting the moment the event is over,” says Holub. “Use the hashtag to send the after-event analytics, photos, blogs or summaries.”

If you need to write about the event once it is over, either for a report or news story, use the hashtag to gain insight into what people were thinking and feeling.

“Often times I can see how people are reacting and the questions that they have and that has a very real impact on how I may report and shape the story going forward,” says Maughan. “The Twitter audience is quite well informed. So they make you aware of things. They push you in the direction that they are interested in.”

Do you live tweet? What is your advice? Let us know in the comments below.