Renée Rybak Lang, New Media Specialist, Education Sector

Live-tweeting -- the kind of tweeting where you replay to your Twitter followers what people are saying at an event in real time -- is something that seems to be gaining popularity at conferences around the nonprofit circuit. It can be fun to do on your own (like at NTC 2011), but it can have real benefits for your organization too. Small or large scale, live-tweeting is a great way for your organization to create buzz, join conversations, draw attention to your causes, and gain credibility (and followers!) -- all at a relatively low cost (your time). And although there's no "right way" to live-tweet, not everyone is great at it either and it can sometimes come off haphazardly. If you're looking to try live-tweeting for your own organization, follow these guidelines for success: 

1. Choose Wisely. If you're going to make live-tweeting work for your organization, be intentional about it. Ask yourself, "What does my organization hope to gain from live-tweeting? Is it to bring attention to a certain issue? Do we want to incorporate followers' ideas into the live conversation?" Knowing these things can help you decide which events you choose to cover, and how you'll organize your live-tweeting. At my organization, we try and limit our live-tweeting to cover events that align well with our key issues and messaging. If it's our own event, we set aside time during the program to ask questions we receive from our Twitter followers so they're involved in the conversation too.
2. Promotion. There's no sense in live-tweeting if your followers don't know you're doing it! The goal here is to generate enthusiasm for what you're doing. Announce to your followers what you'll be live-tweeting, invite them to follow along, live-tweet with you, or ask questions. At my organization, we announce it (at a minimum) in our e-newsletter, on our blog, and on Twitter. We also dedicate a hash tag to the coverage so that our followers can easily follow what other live-tweeters are saying. Hash tags are also a must if you're going to track the impact of your efforts and conversations afterwards.
3. Practice Makes Perfect. The old adage of "practice makes perfect" is so true for mastering live-tweeting -- the more you do it, the better you get at. If your organization wants to integrate live-tweeting into your events, before jumping in, practice first on your personal Twitter account during an upcoming event or note-take during a meeting (in 140-characters or less) and see if you pick up the quotable points.
4. Tag Team. At my organization, live-tweeting is a team sport -- most often, one person is the dedicated tweeter, and a second manages retweets, as well as comments and questions that come in. Another scenario? We have a third colleague analyze the action in real time on our blog, or follow up with more substantive commentary following the event. Of course, this is only possible if you have the staff and resources to do it (Hootsuite makes teaming up easy), but in our experience, divvying up the responsibility helps keep things focused, and provides our followers with more complete coverage in the end.
5. Fake it. The existence of webcasting makes the opportunities for live-tweeting endless. You don't need to be even remotely close to where the action is happening; all you need is a computer and an internet connection! Sure, it's a little fib that you're not actually in the room. But, sometimes your followers get better, more focused coverage that way. Plus, it gives your organization an opportunity to weigh in on important conversations happening elsewhere when you otherwise wouldn't have a presence.
6. Measurement. How do you know if your efforts were successful? This partly depends on what specific goals you set in the first place: Was it to gain followers? Create buzz? Drive traffic to your website? Gain press coverage? If you see an uptick in followers, or an increased amount of traffic to your site, surely your live-tweeting made an impact. But, in the end, if you've really done a good job, followers will make a point to say "thank you." Don't miminize that… sometimes, that's all you need.
7. Don't Let the Conversation Go Cold. Live-tweeting can stir up a great deal of attention for your organization, align your name with the causes you hold dear, and help you break through to new audiences. Don't let that momentum slip away. Make sure you have follow up planned: write a blog post summing up what happened at the event, noting the big key themes from the conversation and what your organization thinks about it, talk about it in your next e-newsletter, tweet about it and refer back to the hash tags, start up a Twitter chat or Q&A afterwards and ask new followers to join in … the possibilities are endless.

If you take something away from reading this article I hope it's this: live-tweeting isn't just for NTC conferences anymore. Get out there and make it work for your own organization! 

Renée Rybak Lang manages new media strategy for Education Sector, an independent education think tank in Washington, D.C. She is responsible for all of the organization's new and social media assets, including daily management of its website and blog, and develops strategies that engage Education Sector's key audiences and creatively communicate the organization's policy ideas and messages. She can be reached at rrybak@educationsector.org, or on twitter @rrybak.