At the beginning of the month, at Social Media Week, I was invited by fellow social media consultant Natasha D’Souza to live-blog for her while she presented her session “Navigating User Generated Content”.
Now, I’ve done the blogging thing. I’ve done the moderating sessions thing. And we all know I’ve done the Twitter thing (sometimes a little too much). But doing it all at once? Sure! Shouldn’t be that hard, right?
Hmmmmm…
Having been asked to live blog on short notice, it was very hard to prepare for the session – ie. make sure I knew what the session was about, and figure out what was expected of me. Overall, I think I did an ok job. Not great, however, just ok.
Here are some of the areas that I think I stumbled on:
• Rambling – I hadn’t reviewed the presentation, so I didn’t know the points and tried to capture as much as I could. As a result, I rambled – quite a bit.
• Distractions – Trying to look at the slides, listen to Natasha, blog, respond on twitter, and take part in the discussion could get overwhelming at times. Multitasking can be effective, but only if it’s relatively organized.
• Location in relation to the stage. We were in a dark setting, and I wasn’t in a highly visible area to get Natasha’s attention to ask questions coming in from Twitter.
After the session, I reflected on what I could have done differently, and did some research about tips and best practices for live blogging events. Obviously the most important advice is to organize yourself beforehand, and the tips below go into more detail of what that means. So, in no particular order, I’ve assembled what I think are the most important live-blogging tips below:
1. Create a unique Twitter hashtag beforehand, promote it before the event so people know what to use and search for (there was the same one used for 2 events going on at the same time, which made filtering tweets a little trickier.)
2. Set up your accounts and tools well before the event and test them to make sure you know how they work and can utilize them fully.
3. Set up a live-blogging platform (if it’s actually live blogging). Cover It Live does a nice job. If you’re live-streaming, UStream is a good tool to use.
4. Promote your event! Create an event on EventBrite, MeetUp, Refresh Events, or Facebook – The choice is yours, but make sure you cross-promote it on other networks, and have the ability for people to easily share the information. Share it with your community, and get influencers in your community to share it as well!
5. Find out who your audience is. Presenting content that’s old news for professionals, or speaking over the heads of a group looking for an introductory session makes for an audience that loses interest quickly.
6. Check your Wifi/3G/other forms of Internet access. If possible, have a backup. The Wifi at the building we were in wasn’t great, so I was tethering from my iPhone. However, the 3G network wasn’t as fast as it could be either. You can’t win them all, I guess!
7. Make sure you have power! Bring your extra battery, your charger, and an extension cord.
8. Other multimedia devices. A smart phone, camera, video recorder, audio recorder, and sometimes even a pen and paper all help to capture moments that will make your event coverage more engaging.
9. Know the content of the presentation. You’re not in a university lecture, you shouldn’t be scrambling to capture everything your speaker says. Know what they are going to say, and capture the key points effectively.
10. Film the event so that you have a backup of anything you may have missed. At the most basic level, a Flip camera works well for this, and is mountable on a tripod.
When you get to your conference:
Tweet that you are there! And take a picture of the building and/or room so that people can find you a little more easily.
Give out cards or tweet about the link to your blog so people can revisit your presentation after the event. And post your slides – whether they’re embeddable or not is up to you.
One last note. Keeping on top of all of this can prove to be a challenge. Try to get help – have a photographer, a videographer, a Twitter moderator, and a live blogger, or a combination of any of the above. It will keep the presentation consistent and will allow each member to focus on their job completely and not get lost if they miss a beat.
Do you have any additional tips for live blogging? What are some of the issues you’ve dealt with?
