Note:  If you need a primer on Twitter, refer back to my January 2009 newsletter, A Taste of Twitter. 

One of the many benefits of Twitter is the ability to follow tweets from conferences or live events; conference attendees tweet or share information from conference sessions via Twitter, and anyone can read what the attendees share about the conference. 

A growing number of legal conferences are participating in live conference tweeting, including four legal conferences in the past two weeks: 

• National Association for Law Placement (NALP) 2010 Annual Education Conference (April 28-May 1, 2010);
• American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) Annual Spring Meeting (April 29-May 2, 2010);
• American Bar Association (ABA) Women in Law Leadership Academy (April 29-30, 2010); and
•  Association of Legal Administrators (ALA) 2010 Annual Conference (May 3-6, 2010). 

Because more legal conferences are tweeting, it's worth noting how conference tweets work, including some best practices and benefits of conference tweets.  Keep in mind that the concept of conference tweets would work for any live event your firm hosts (and would want to publicize), not just formal conferences.   For example, some universities, such as American University, are encouraging people to tweet from commencement ceremonies this month:

The Basics

Prior to a conference, conference organizers designate a hashtag for the conference and notify attendees.  The hashtag is the hash symbol (#) plus some logical abbreviation.  The designated hashtags for the legal conferences mentioned above were:

• NALP - #NALP10
• ABI Annual Spring Meeting - #ASM2010
• ABA Women in Law Leadership Academy - #ABAWILL
• ALA 2010 Annual Conference - #ALACONF

Anyone can follow tweets from the conference by entering the designated hashtag in the Twitter search bar, such as #ABAWILL:

Twitter displays real-time tweets with the hashtag you entered.  Note:  Twitter only captures tweets with the hashtag; if a conference attendee tweets about the conference but fails to include the hashtag, the tweet won't be included in the search results.  

The results displayed above are real time with the most recent tweets about the #ABAWILL Conference at the top of the list. 

The ability to search and follow conference tweets is helpful to legal professionals who are interested but unable to attend a particular conference.  With conference tweets, you can follow along from your office by searching for the hashtag and reading the updates at your convenience.

Best Practices

1. Transcript.  One problem with the Twitter search is that the tweets with the designated hashtag are only temporary.  For example, at some point the Twitter stream is no longer available as shown below with the designation, "older tweets are temporarily unavailable."
   
   
   
   To record a more permanent record of your conference tweets, consider using a third-party service such as What the Hashtag that provides a transcript of the tweets with the designated hashtag. 
   
   For example NALP registered its hashtag, #NALP10, with What the Hashtag.  Anyone interested can click here to view the transcript of tweets from the NALP conference. 

2. Statistics.  Third-party services such as What the Hashtag also share statistics about your conference tweets.  For example, as of May 2, 301 tweets contained the NALP hashtag, #NALP10, and 32 people tweeted with the hashtag.   

   
   
   
   It's also interesting to note that three of the Top 10 contributors were not conference attendees.  Yet, they were obviously interested in the information tweeted from the conference and engaged in discussion.  This further illustrates the value of conference tweets.
   

3. Hashtag.  Conference organizers should choose a short hashtags because the hashtag will count toward your 140 character limit per tweet.  The hashtags chosen for the NALP, ABA, ABI and ALA conferences are great examples; they are short yet recognizable. Conference organizers should also consider offering separate hashtags for each session or panel if there are concurrent sessions and multiple attendees tweeting. 

4. Moderator.  Conference organizers or panelists can designate a tweeting moderator for the conference or an individual session.  The tweeting moderator would monitor the conference tweets and respond to questions or complaints.

5. Display.  To raise awareness of the conference tweets and encourage attendees to participate, conference organizers can set up a display at the conference showing all of the tweets from the conference on a large screen.  The picture below is from the ALA Conference; they had a Twitter display showing all tweets about the conference. 
   
    
   

Benefits

Everyone benefits from conference tweets, including the conference organizers, panelists, attendees and non-attendees.

1. Information.  Conference tweets allow people who weren't able to attend a conference to follow the main topics from their home or office.  Additionally, many conferences schedule concurrent sessions and attendees often want to attend several sessions at once.  They can now attend one session live and follow conference tweets from another concurrent session of interest.

2. Participation.  Non-attendees can participate by commenting, re-tweeting or tweeting questions about the attendees' tweets.
   
   For example, I tweeted the following while listening to a panel at #NALP10. 
   
   
   
   Two days later, one of my followers, @holleeinbalance, asked the following question. 
   
   
   
   I responded to @holleeinbalance because I thought she might have been thinking about my tweet.
   
   
   
   @holleeinbalance responded ... she was thinking about my tweet! 
   
   
   
   I connected @holleeinbalance with the panelist who discussed this topic.  While @holleeinbalance did not attend #NALP10, she made a new contact (the panelist) and got the information she needed ... all through tweets about the conference. 
   

3. Publicity.  Conference tweets expand the panelists' audience beyond the walls of the conference room.  The above conversation between @holleeinbalance and me illustrates the reach of conference tweets.  @holleeinbalance was not physically at the conference but followed and contributed to the conversation. 
   
   And, refer back to the image of the statistics from the conference.  I mentioned that three of the Top 10 contributors did not attend the conference.  I know this because they are my followers; they tweeted about the conference because they followed other attendees' tweets and asked questions or provided comments. 
   

4. Feedback.  Conference tweets allow attendees to share feedback, both positive and negative, about the conference.   Conference organizers can use this information to improve future conferences.  For example, the first tweet below is from the ALA Conference; this attendee didn't like the "silly exercises" at the keynote address. 
   
   
   
   The tweet below is from the same attendee who obviously liked the IT guy who presented. 
   
   
   

5. Clients .  Consider following tweets from conferences outside the legal industry that might interest your clients.  Then, share interesting or helpful tweets with your clients. 
   
   For example, the International Council of Shopping Centers 2010 Retail Real Estate Convention is later this month, May 23-25.  They have a Twitter page devoted to the conference; follow this page to see what hashtag they designate for the conference.  Then, search the hashtag during the conference for updates to share with your client.  

Conclusion

While conference tweets are no substitute to attending a live conference, they are a nice alternative when you have scheduling or budget conflicts that prohibit you from attending the conference in person.