Souk El Akel — Live Tweeting Report
Miriam Hamade, Mira Marini
Souk El Akel is one of the main highlights that entice and engage people in a collective social experience where they communicate, reach out and indulge in tasting experiences. The event is Usually held in different places around the Lebanese districts with a main emphasis on Beirut Souks during the winter season. This year the event was held in the last weeks of March where like usual different people, cuisines, restaurants and female artisans have partaken a stand and contributed to the magic of this social event crowned by the delicious smell of food, laughter of children and soundscapes of random conversations.
My partner and I have chosen Sunday March 24, 2019 as the most convenient day for live tweeting on the main highlights of the event. The date was selectively chosen due to different variables among which the vast majority of people proposed to attend this event on a Sunday afternoon as a part of a family activity. Interestingly, as expected, Souk El Akel during that Sunday evening was crowded by a diverse demographic, socioeconomic and ethnic classes of people. For a moment, one can reflect on the whole Lebanese society through this extended line of booths, the beauty was not only in the coordination and organisation of the event, it was in the faces, voices and reactions of the people.
As we arrived, my partner and I began clicking photos of all the booths, taking notes on the little details and simply blending with crowd. Despite the fun that we were experiencing, communicating to and with people about covering the event for social media purposes demonstrated to be challenging. In general, both random individuals and booth owners have completely refused to express their opinions and share with us information even before we explained the objectives of the projects. Nevertheless, these struggles proved to be crowned with success as we got the chance to talk to few people who expressed readiness and friendliness to our proposals. In addition, two booth owners were more than helpful and even provided us with more information than we initially sought.
Significantly, all our efforts were directed towards launching a successful and communicable live tweeting event. However, this kind of activities doesn’t rely on luck nor can be based on impromptu conversations. The preparation for the live tweeting event was planned and concluded three days prior to the actual event, where we gathered information on the most suitable hashtags that can engage the audience, the importance of articulating the tweets in a fun and interesting manner as well as the proper timing between tweets to keep the audience engaged, interested and reactive to the posts we are sharing.
First of all, through our created twitter accounts we followed our acquaintances, influential people and most trending events. After which, we employed our knowledge that we gathered through research towards using the most appealing hashtags, the proper choice of words and the most interesting live pictures, video streams and quotes. Considerably, employing the Twitter moment was highlighted as a curation and introduction to the event through which it was planned to prepare the audience for the oncoming tweets.
One of the main strategies that we employed was tweeting the Stay Tuned message together in order to motivate the audience and increase their curiosity. After which we adapted the time strategy where we tweeted in a different time frame characterised by 15 minutes each. Moreover, we focused on the five Big Ws, the Who, Where, When, What and Why, implementing emphasis on these 5 Ws was like a light being turned on amidst darkness.
The who helped us determine the demographic target of the event and the tags that will attract them. For instance, Souk el Akel attracts bloggers, youth and teens, families and food addicts. Through highlighting the who, were able to highlight the hashtags that attract best the demographic population on twitter. Additionally, the Where although evidently is located in Lebanon, mainly Beirut area, it provided an insight on the geographic targeting of the audience mainly in Lebanon and its region. Moreover, the when supported adding details that will engage the users who lack information on the event dates. Nevertheless, the what provided most of the information required since the diversity which was present during the event from organizers, curators, chefs, startups and established business, has promoted a wider outreach for our live tweeting.
After concluding the live tweeting event, we monitored as the engagement started to rapidly increase. For instance, the engagements recorded during the day of the event were the highest followed by continuous impressions and click activities. For example, my 10 tweets were able to collect 3,082 impressions, 78 profile visits and a gain of four followers. The highest engagement rate was recorded at 18% whereas a minor number of 3 retweets was recorded and only 6 link clicks were realised, highlighting the need for improving the orientation and direction of the tweets and its supporting hashtags.
On the other hand, Mira’s tweets recorded a total of 4.7K impressions, with a total of 26 like, 1 retweet and the highest engagement rate was 8.7%.
The event was overwhelming and stressful in terms of anticipating the people’s reaction and hoping that our communication channel was adequate enough to reach out as many people on Twitter as possible. Overall, the insights provided through the twitter analytics depicted the wide opportunities lying within the social media and its power in outreaching and communicating messages. The insights highlighted the embedding need on the necessity of mastering the techniques of Twitter hashtags, moments and analytics as tools of promoting and introducing social impact. Although the experience was empowering, it was evident that we need to develop our knowledge and information on the Hashtags use, language communication as well as message delivery.
