Twitter and Smartphones demand new presentation strategies. Here’s how to adapt.
The real-time web defined
Writing in Read Write Web, Ken Fromm characterizes the real-time web as a new form of communication, with a new body of content, published in real time.
Twitter has emerged as the dominant platform for real-time web communications. Twitter has also become the dominant channel for conversation at live events.
Twitter offers new ways of engaging audiences in presentations.
Because it is immediate, Twitter can be used to build audience participation into your talks. Twitter is limited to
140 characters—Twitter’s limit is defined by the text message limit of 160 characters with 20 reserved for the address. Used cleverly, Twitter’s brevity can be the soul of its wit. The space constraints can be used to communicate only the essential idea.
Unlike other synchronous forms of communication (IM, SMS, voice) Twitter is public. It is also distinguished by a built-in social graph in that each person publishes to a social network of followers who each in turn have their own network of followers.
Twitter’s social graph means that your talk reaches far beyond the confines of your stage.
Twitter can also be filtered by hashtags. Hashtags are a pound sign (#) followed by a term (e.g. #swiftdemo). A hash- tag will be assigned for your event. You may want to assign a hashtag for your session as well. You can follow this hashtag in your Twitter client. Or you can use the Twitter search to find everything tagged with a specific term.
Olivia Mitchell has written an excellent article on this topic. She summarizes the benefits for the audience as:
- Focus
- Greater content
- Greater participation
- Virtual access
- Better connectivity
Speakers also benefit from Twitter integration:
- Greater interactivity
- More conversation
- Greater audience interest and participation
- Virtual audiences
- Colleagues involved
What kind of bird are you? Knowing your speaking style can help you use real-time communications more effectively.
How to Twitter Your Talk
Our tips have been culled from a number of best practices written up on the web and tailored to different presentation styles.
- Use Twitter early to start seeding interest and collecting ideas. Post questions to your followers and ask them to re-tweet (RT) your questions to others.
- Start your talk with a slide that points people to your session tag and session page.
- Establish ground rules for your style.
- Owls may want to ask people to Tweet during Q&A only.
- Hummingbirds may want to create your talk in the form of a series of tweets. With the help of an assistant, you can publish these in sync with your presentation and encourage people to RT and comment on them.
- Penguins may want to act as an ombudsman for the audience. Structure your talk as a series of questions that can be answered in tweets. Work with a partner who can capture and highlight these tweets for further discussion and conversation.
- After your talk is finished, publish the highlights in the form of a series of tweets with the session or event tag embedded.
- Be sure to write tweets that can be re-tweeted by leaving room for extra characters.
- Be sure to follow your new followers. Twittering your presentation is a great way to build an audience for future talks.
For speakers on SWIFT Mobile
If your event producer has implemented the SWIFT Mobile platform, you can use features built into SWIFT to improve your talk:
EMBEDDED HASHTAGS
SWIFT mobile has a Twitter client that allows users to go to your session page and tweet directly from your page. The SWIFT Twitter client will automatically embed the hashtag for your session in the window so that people can just write and publish.
AGGREGATION OF YOUR SESSION TWEETS
Your Tweets will be aggregated on your session page.
POLLING
SWIFT Mobile also has a polling feature that can be used before, during and after your talk. If you want to build a poll into your presentation, just email it to your administrator and we’ll construct it and add it to your session page. You can then direct people to the link from their phones and laptops to complete the poll in real time. Then you can publish the results to the audience.
About SWIFT Mobile
SWIFT Mobile is a platform for smartphones that improves real-time communications, connections, and commerce at live events.
On SWIFT Mobile you can:
- Leave your laptop computer at the hotel
- Connect with colleagues, sales prospects, partners, vendors and others through the event mobile directory
- Access attendee and speaker profile pages
- Carry the conference schedule in the palm of your hand
- Participate in the customized, aggregated Twitter feed for the event
- Obtain your personalized, automatically generated trip report.
