Live Tweeting

I was given the task of live tweeting an event of my choice for the social media class I am currently taking. I’ve never live tweeted before, so I wasn’t sure of what all it consisted of when starting this project. The event I chose was the Ohio Northern University Men’s Basketball game on February 10, 2018 against John Carroll University. I felt this event was appropriate because I am a cheerleader for ONU and could really keep up and pay attention to the game.

It turns out live tweeting consists of giving a play-by-play of whatever event is being tweeted. It also includes a short, easy to remember hashtag to promote others the use, therefore bringing more attention to the event. I got a lot of attention from other students who also attend ONU because my tweets had to do with something that was taking place on campus, which draws the student demographic. If people don’t particularly care about sports, it’s safe to say most of those people still care about whether the home team won or lost. It is also important to include pictures, videos or other graphics to draw the attention of Twitter users. I noticed most of my “likes” on tweets came from those that included graphics. I especially got the most “likes” on a video of me getting thrown in a back-tuck basket toss.

It was more challenging than I thought it would be to live tweet during the basketball game. The only things to update people about was the score because as a cheerleader, I couldn’t sit on the sidelines on my phone the entire time giving an exact play-by-play of what was going on during the entire game. There also isn’t much that goes on to tweet about at a basketball other than the game itself. It was also hard to find the perfect timing for tweets when the score wasn’t constantly changing and I could remain unbiased so reach more demographics rather than just ONU students, faculty, parents, fans, etc.

My first live tweeting session went a lot better than I had originally anticipated and got more attention that I thought it would. This positive reaction is encouraging and inspires me to live tweet events I’m involved in more often. It’s amazing how many people care about what you have to say and will support you, whether they realize they’re doing it or not. I’ve provided the link to my blog on my Twitter account to urge users to read about my experience live tweeting. You can also go to my Twitter account to follow along with all my tweets daily!