Once upon a tweet…
There was a Bournemouth University student who used Twitter to share her games night evening. After 50 rounds, one team was left victorious and the other left seething.
On Boxing Day, when two halves of the family came together, it was time for a showdown. The final round of the annual quiz was in full swing as I live-tweeted the event and adopted a multimodality approach.
In case you have never heard of multimodality, this video explains it.
In summary, multimodality is simply putting multiple modalities (images, text, visuals, audio, videos etc.) together in order to communicate messages more clearly. For example, adding a caption to a picture is classed as multimodality, as the use of a written-text caption adds context and makes the picture easier for the audience to understand. Multiple modalities were used throughout my live-tweeting experience.
In live-tweeting etiquette, you should always begin your tweets by alerting followers and setting the scene.
Whilst doing this through written language, I decided to bring in some humour by using additional modalities in the form of GIFs. In case you are unfamiliar, a GIF is an animated image which loops continuously.
In a world where 350,000 tweets are sent every minute, it’s easy for posts to get lost in people’s news feeds. To stand out from all the digital noise, adopting humour is a sure way to capture the attention of Twitter users. Using GIFs is also an excellent way to further enhance the story without using extra words, which of course is vital when limited to 280 characters.
“GIFs are the key to audiences hearts and minds.” Twitter GIFS 101
According to social media marketing strategist Jeff Bullas, injecting the personal touch in tweets is the key to getting followers to stick with posts. Personality was included in various tweets through written language in the form of short expressions and opinions from myself.
At times, personality was further injected through the use of GIFs, such as when I posted a GIF of a confused little girl alongside written text saying “Me right now”, to portray how I felt in that moment.
This light-hearted and humorous approach that was maintained throughout my live-tweeting experience was acceptable for the chosen event. In the future, however, using GIFs and other modalities in more serious or formal circumstances would not appropriate.
NEXT TIME:
Using GIFs certainly added the entertainment factor but, as a live-tweeter, finding the right GIF was time-consuming. Whilst focusing on finding a relevant GIF, I also had to pay attention to the quiz and the events as they unfolded. My multi-tasking skills were definitely tried and tested. Depending on future live-tweeting events, I may choose to limit my GIF usage in order to add more context to the event through written language.
The key to live-tweeting an event is posting only the most interesting information and making every tweet count. I wanted readers to enjoy my thread after all. Arguably, the most important tweets to share as part of my live-tweeting experience were the quiz questions and answers, as this was the centre focus of the event. When sharing each question, it was an excellent opportunity to use Twitter Polls.
Using real-time Twitter Polls was not only a useful tool in bringing the quiz to life but, it was an excellent way to engage with those keeping up with the event and get them involved.
When the time was up in answering Twitter Polls, some users still wanted to play and tweeted the answers directly.
All answers were revealed at the end of the final round, meaning if people wanted to know whether their guess was right, they would have to keep up with the event or return to the thread later.
NEXT TIME:
Initially, I only set the polls to be live for ten minutes to keep it as in time with the quiz as possible. However, in the future, I would choose to leave questions open for a longer period of time. This is so people catching up with the thread at a later time can still vote in polls.
Once my live-tweeting experience was complete, it was time to create a Twitter Moment.
Twitter Moments serve as short-form content and allow users to tell a story in a series of tweets. Viewers can swipe the pages of Moments, just like flicking through a book.
With many questions, quotes, GIFs, answers and more to choose from, it was a challenge to cut them down to the ten most effective tweets.
You can view my Twitter Moment here.
In all, live-tweeting and creating a Twitter Moment was certainly an experience. Here are some of my other key takeouts:
- It’s hard to keep up: As you can imagine, a room full of family members playing a quiz can be noisy and excitable. Trying to accurately portray the scene and add context to tweets was, at times, challenging. Questions and answer options were only repeated once (as there were quiz rules to follow) meaning I had to pay close attention to the quizmaster whilst also keeping an eye on what else was happening in the room.
- Mistakes can happen: No matter how much you proofread, the fast-paced nature of live-tweeting can mean mistakes may happen. Secretly, I do love it when the BBC are tweeting live at an event and they spell an important person’s name wrong but, after my live-tweeting experience, I can understand how these mistakes may happen.
- Creating a Twitter Moment is tougher than you think: Trying to pick the 10 most effective tweets was hard, as there were so many to choose from. In creating my Moment, I adopted the mindset of a reader who hadn’t seen the live event and tried to vision which tweets would make the most sense whilst being entertaining too. Hopefully, it has worked.
The story-telling didn’t end there, however. I have also had the opportunity to use Instagram to create stories to encourage followers to read my blog. You can find out more about my experience here.
In all, I have learnt a lot from my live-tweeting and Twitter Moment’s experience and with an ultimate goal of a career in marketing, I will take these lessons with me into the future.
