How Twitter Can Engage And Grow Your Presentation Audience

By John Rode on August 19, 2010

Twitter is having a growing impact on presentations and you really have two opportunities to use it to greater effect. The first is to use Twitter to better engage your immediate audience, and the second to engage your larger audience beyond your webinar or conference.

In 140 characters or less: How Twitter gets you a larger, more engaged presentation audience

Twitter Tips To Engage Your Immediate Audience
Invite people to Tweet to their followers
Create a #hashtag
Dish out 140 character sound bites
Have a “friendly” monitor the Twitter back-channel
Take breaks for Twitter feedback – or put a Twitter feed right in your presentation
Invite people to Tweet their questions to you
The objective is to surprise your audience with innovative use of Twitter and juice engagement by enabling them to actually participate in and influence your presentation. In case you get any wisecracks or tomatoes, prepare yourself with a self-deprecating one-liner and a knockout comeback. Positive, negative or humorous, this interaction will only deepen audience engagement.

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How To Expand Your Audience With Twitter
We all know the effort involved in creating effective presentations, getting people to sign-up, and getting them to actually show up. And with 50% of people frequently tweeting about presentations (thanks to Hubspot’s Dan Zarrella for that stat) it behooves you to take advantage of this channel to get the greatest return on your marketing effort. Getting people to send the tweet is only the beginning. Put the right infrastructure in place ahead of your presentation and you’ll amplify the effectiveness of your Twitter efforts:

Create a landing page
Enable easy social media sharing
Post your presentation beforehand
Record a voice overlay
The landing page gives your Tweeters a place to point their followers, while enabling sharing for Twitter, Facebook, etc. on your landing page boosts the viral effect. Posting your presentation ahead of time to your blog or website ensures that you don’t have that inevitable delay between the presentation and making it available – Timeliness is critical! The voice overlay is essential to give your larger, non-attending audience a chance to hear the context behind your slides. This also frees you up to create clean slides with stunning imagery without having to fall back on bullets and dense text to get your message across – your voice will do it for you. Plus, it’s a great occasion to practice!

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