TwitterSpace Best Practices for Hosts and Speakers

NFTTalk.space has been in Beta since April 15, 2022. However, we have been building the platform for several months. During this time, we have visited hundreds of spaces during our development and testing phases. We’ve seen all kinds of spaces, all kinds of hosts and speakers. Based on these experiences, we present some best practices for new and intermediate-level #TwitterSpaces hosts and speakers. Hopefully, you will find them useful.

We are not pretending to be experts in this; we see our own experiences in #TwitterSpaces as a journey and we are just sharing as we learn on the way. If anything seems unrealistic or inappropriate let us know via comments or better yet, join our regular spaces to talk to us!

Now let's get right to the best practices that we want to share with you.

TL;DR Edition

Here is the short version for those who do not have the time or patience to read the full article:

Set expectations for yourself and your audience
Choose a meaningful title — use carefully chosen keywords in the title of your space for the best discovery potential
Know the lingo — know the meaning of the commonly used terms and phrases like: nest, jumbotron, rug, etc.
Apply basic etiquette — speak after someone is finished speaking, raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak, and use emojis to show support for the current speaker and host

Setting Expectations

The very first thing to consider when hosting a #TwitterSpace on your own is to set expectations for yourself and your audience.

Ask yourself: what do I want to get out of this space today? If you don’t have any specific goal(s), reconsider hosting it at a different time. Remember, we are all borrowing valuable time from others when we call them to join our spaces. They are generously donating their time to be with you so make it count!

Of course, sometimes you just want to hang out with friends you have made all over the world and it is perfectly OK to host such a space to chill. But do let your target audience know that you are not going to be talking about anything specific and they should have an option to join or not.

Now, if you have one or more goals, how do you inform your audience ahead of time? Very simple: use an appropriate title for your space. Instead of using a random title for your space, be conscious of the title of your space.

Remember all the folks that do not know you find out via your space’s title so make it approrpirate to your objective for each space.

Choose the Right Title for your Space

The title of your space should have the primary purpose of your space stated in plain and simple English so that potential guests can see what you are talking about before entering your space. Using targeted keywords in the title also helps you get discovered on NFTTalk.space.

For example, say you want to talk about business strategies surrounding NFT Picture for Profile (PFP) art projects, consider the following two titles:

a) Come talk about stuff and shill your project

b) Discussing #NFT PFP project strategies

Which of the above titles do you think will draw more audience? When it comes to TwitterSpaces you need to think like search engine search terms. Use terms that people are most likely to enter in the Twitter app or websites like NFTTalk.space or even Google or YouTube to look for content related to your topic of interest.

A good title not only helps others find your space but also helps you set the tone of the conversation. On Twitter Spaces, folks tend to go in different directions at times and the title is always there for you to use to reset the space back to your topic of interest.

Knowing the Terminology of TwitterSpaces

TwitterSpaces is a brand new edition to Twitter and lots of folks do not yet know about it! So mastering the terms related to the TwitterSpaces is important for you to showcase your knowledge and assert appropriate reactions from existing TwitterSpace hosts and speakers. Let’s go over some of the most common terms used in spaces.

Space — a short name for a TwitterSpace that is either scheduled or currently live
Room — synonymous with a Space
Nest — the list of shared Tweets that are part of the space
Jumbotron — same as Nest
Rugging — someone who is not being heard due to technical difficulties
In the Blockchain — someone who is rugging
Retweet the Space — to share the space link with your Twitter users
Retweet the Room — same as Retweet the Space
IRL — in real life. Someone referring to their real-life activities

Apply Basic Etiquette

When you host a public space on TwitterSpaces, anyone can join. You have no control over who can come and start listening to whatever is being discussed. If in the future, Twitter offers private spaces, you are most likely able to get away with your own way of doing things inside a private space. However, while you are in the public, please consider the following basic etiquette guidelines:

Treat others like you want to be treated — with kindness

Treat everyone like you wish to be treated by them — be fair and polite even when the person on the other hand is difficult. Remember, we grow together when we allow each other to listen to each other. So give it a try and listen to the views that are counter to yours or your friends. However, do not tolerate unkind behavior or verbal attacks on yourself or your audience — there are definitely trolls out there who are disruptive and you can remove them from speaking or even your spaces using both host and co-host privileges provided by Twitter.
Being kind to others who have opposing or even faulty views is a way to build self-tolerance and we highly recommend practicing this. Remember, everyone’s reality is different and we all live in the same world but have separate lives which leads us to thoughts and understanding that are not always equal.

Be patient — not everyone is a great speaker or host like you!

In your spaces, you are bound to meet people from all walks of life and not to mention from all around the globe. Some will have superb language and presentation skills, but many will lack in these areas as most folks are not well versed in public speaking even with a great deal of education.

So being patient and letting someone finish their speech and thought is generally a great virtue and require exercising patience. Please consider this every time you bring up someone to the speaker panel.

Reset the space — bring it back to the topic of interest

It is human nature that often the discussion will stray into unintended directions, which is totally fine for a friendly conversation with a bunch of strangers that you met in space. However, it is also very much okay to bring the space back to the topic by announcing that you are resetting the room to the topic.

This means that you are going to want to restart the discussion per your topic of interest — which should be clearly stated in the title of the space.

This is a very healthy way to keep discussions on point and yet allow folks to enjoy conversation in a manner that makes it a natural progression of thoughts and not like a corporate meeting or a paid advertisement that often rush people to speak on point.

Remind the audience of recording

If you decide to record the space, please remind the audience that you are doing so, and their speaking or asking questions will constitute consent to being recorded.

If you have the habit of deleting the recording after you have listened to them for your own research and lessons learned purposes, you should let the audience know that you plan to delete the recording in a few days.

Also, let them know that Twitter only keeps these recordings for 30 days and after that, they are removed from Twitter. However, anyone can download and keep the recording on their own devices using tools and websites for as long as they wish.

Understand TwitterSpace’s Technological Limitations

Like any new technology, the TwitterSpaces feature of Twitter is not free of bugs. Here are some common issues that you will face as a speaker and host:

Rugging — losing audio connection or having poor quality audio

Often you will see that you cannot hear someone well or someone cannot hear you well. This is infamously known as “rugging” in the space.

When someone is rugging, they will try to go out of the room and come back, and once restored as a speaker, they may be audible again. But this is not a guaranteed solution to this problem.

Reduce the number of pinned posts on the nest or jumbotron

Often if you have too many pinned posts, it is said that the space rugs more often. So you might want to consider cleaning up the pinned tweets from time to time during your space’s lifetime.