Twitter in Presentations Best Practice

I’ll keep this page updated with best practice techniques for presenting with Twitter. Here are some of the best resources I’ve seen so far about how to use (and how NOT to use) Twitter during presentations:

• Olivia Mitchell’s free eBook “How to present with Twitter (and other backchannels)”
• Jeremiah Owyang: How speakers should integrate social into their presentations
• Olivia Mitchell: 10 tools for presenting with Twitter
• Olivia Mitchell: Should you display the live twitter stream on a large screen?
• Olivia Mitchell: Three Stages of Presenting with Twitter
• Jeffrey Mann: Using Twitter at events and conferences
• Kathy Reiffenstein: 5 ways to integrate Twitter into your presentations

Tips for using the PowerPoint Twitter Tools:

• If you’re worried, use the moderation options (see instructions for the custom feed), and ask a colleague to manage the stream for you. I personally find this a little counter-productive, since the audience still sees the “offending” tweets, and you’re the only one in the dark. But sadly there may be spam tweets and trolls and pointless snarky comments, and showing these in your presentation would just be a distraction.
• Pre-cache all the tools by going through the slides in presentation mode and setting any options – they will be maintained until the file is closed (or used the advanced options to preset the values – see instructions)
• The whole point of the tools is to engage your audience in your presentation – I find the best way to do this is to “set the agenda” yourself, by asking the audience questions related to your content (the AutoTweet functionality could be used here), and reviewing the feedback with them.
• The most commonly-used tool is the feedback slide. I find it works best if you insert it a few times into the presentation — e.g. at the end of each major section.
• It’s hard to keep an eye on the ticker stream and present at the same time, and potentially distracting for the audience — use it in reasonably small doses, by inserting slides that don’t include the ticker stream.
• If you’re presenting to an audience that is not very used to using twitter, explain the concept upfront. Most people have heard of it, but don’t see the point — you can explain that they now have a reason to sign up! And you can make the parallel with email — everybody knows that senior executive who refused to use email himself/herself. Twitter — or at least the micro-blogging that it represents — is going to be just as widespread.
• Ask people in advance to participate, or before the conference, watch out for the people already using the conference hashtag, and give them a heads-up, so they’re ready to participate in the discussion.
• For voting, there’s inevitably a lag between the vote and the chart being updated (it looks like it’s around 30 seconds in ideal circumstances, but could potentially be much longer – e.g. if somebody is using Twitter via SMS) – if you want the process to be seamless, you might want to consider doing a “voting slide” first without the chart, then coming back to the chart a few slides later to see the results.

Add your thoughts, comments and questions below, and I’ll update this page!

Thanks in advance,

Timo