Twitter Moderators: Better Twitter Value At Your Next Conference

One of the most annoying things about using hashtags on Twitter is that there is no way to ensure that people are using the ‘right’ hashtag for your event or conference. HashDictionary – the hashtag dictionary, can help with what the hashtag means but what if you have 1000 people at a conference, only 10 people know about the official hashtag and there are five or six other hashtags being used? Employ the use of Twitter moderators.

Twitter Moderators

I first came upon the idea of Twitter moderators when interacting with @FiBendall and others at the Ad:Tech conference in Sydney. Fi and some other well known tweeple had been pulled in to broadcast and organise the Tweet stream out of the conference. They would setup relevant hashtags, tweet about what was happening at the conference and were promoted at the conference as Twitter moderators.

The Benefits of Twitter Moderators

Obviously people are free to tweet what they want while at an event or conference and will continue to do so without the help or interference of Twitter Moderators. Benefits of using Twitter moderators include:

  1. Assisting with a more centralised discussion point for specific topics
  2. Helping control ‘hashtag spread’ and the dilution of conversation
  3. Having a specific task to perform, their consistency and focus can raise the value of the tweets to those listening in
  4. Being able to cover several speakers and rooms at once with several moderators
  5. Pre-emptively organising and defining official hashtags on HashDictionary to get the official hashtag moving

Have you used Twitter moderators at your event or conference? What benefits or drawbacks have you found with this method?

2 Comments

fumpT  on March 12th, 2009

Nice idea. I like it.

I’d be keen to see some guidelines published around twitter event moderation.

Adrianne  on March 17th, 2009

Great idea for a large conference, thanks!

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