Getting Started With Twitter

There are more than 200 million Twitter users. Will you be one of them?

Twitter-homepage

Twitter is a great resource for professionals in the events industry because it gives you a real-time overview of what the industry is buzzing about. You can connect with other planners or suppliers instantly and keep up on news throughout the day.

Maybe you’ve thought about joining but felt intimidated either by the sheer size and depth of Twitter, or you’ve worried it will be too hard to learn all the technical aspects of the platform. For the uninitiated, tweeting, retweeting, and hashtags can sound like nonsense terms. Don’t worry — it’s actually pretty easy to get started.

Step one is listening, or “lurking” as it’s called on the internet. Try this simple experiment. Open the Twitter homepage and type #eventprofs into the search box. You’ll see a massive scroll of Tweets related to event planning, and you’ll probably recognize some prominent industry names right away. You’ve also just used your first hashtag — placing a # sign in front of just about any word will pull up Tweets from all over the world on that particular topic. The #eventprofs (shorthand for “event professionals”) hashtag dates back to 2009, and it’s still the most popular one in the industry.

#eventprofs might be the only hashtag you need to get fully oriented, but if you want to explore further try some of the following searches:

#meetingprofs

#eventtech

#assnchat

#association

#hospitality

So get to reading, follow some links, and within a few hours you’ll feel like you have the hang of Twitter. You might even decide to become one of the many millions sharing their stories in 140-character increments.

Kate Mulcrone

Kate Mulcrone is digital editor of Convene.