Any time that you're hosting a webinar (or any other live event) people could be sharing their opinions on Twitter. Are you prepared for the conversation or, like the keynote speaker at Higher Education conference in October likely thought, do you believe that Twitter is overrated?
What Can You do to Prepare For Your Next Webinar?
- If the material is intended only for a limited audience (i.e. the webinar contains confidential information) make it clear that the content should not be shared in any form. Once something's said on Twitter, it can't be "unsaid".
- If you would like people to share and discuss the content set up a hashtag (i.e. #heweb09 for the higher education conference) and let the audience know what it is before the call starts. In addition to encouraging sharing and participation a standard hashtag makes it easier for you to monitor and, when necessary, steer the conversation.
- Have one of your colleagues monitor conversations on the hashtag (if applicable) as well as Tweets that use other common phrases (such as your company or presenter's names) that might be used to reference the presentation in real time.
- Plan for the worst. If an attendee starts misquoting the presenter, sharing confidential information or becomes flat out belligerent, how will you respond?
- Plan for the best. If attendees use Twitter to discuss the call and ask intelligent questions how will you respond? Should you join in on the conversation in real time on Twitter? Should you answer the questions on the call itself so that the people tuning into the webinar, but not on Twitter, can also benefit from the answers? Or, is it better to just let the attendees talk amongst themselves?
- Determine what you want to happen once the call concludes. If you would like to encourage an ongoing conversation you may want to set up a Twitter List including all people that participated on the call. While it's still too premature to say how many people will use Twitter Lists or if they will replace hashtags during live events (odds are if someone signed up for a webinar most if not all of their Tweets will relate to that call at that time) they're so quick and easy to set up that there's little reason not to take advantage of them.
Depending on your perspective you may consider yourself lucky when no one discusses your event online or you may be disappointed that no one participated in the discussion. But, either way, closing your eyes and holding your breath hoping for the best is a big risk.
How Will You Prepare For Your Next Webinar?
Is monitoring Twitter enough, or are there other sites that you monitor in real time?
Do you believe, like Jeremiah Owyang does, that one presenter can do it all, both presenting and monitoring Twitter at the same time?
Are you in a situation where there simply aren't any resources to spare and have no one else that can monitor the conversation while you're presenting?
Is it better to be re-active than pro-active? In honesty, while any event could be discussed on Twitter, most won't be. Does the risk of "wasting" resources monitoring a conversation that doesn't happen exceed the risk of being unaware of what's being said?
