Tweeting the Annual Meeting

Tweeting at the AACP Annual Meeting, July 14–18, 2012, Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center, Kissimmee, Florida

#AACPAM12 is the official Twitter hashtag for the annual meeting.  We encourage Twitter users to utilize this hashtag throughout the meeting. 

We offer a few suggestions to make this a better experience for everyone. As always, be respectful with your comments (e-professionalism applies here!) 

When tweeting about the meeting, be sure to include the hashtag: #AACPAM12

  

Suggestions for using Twitter from Pangan Blog ( http://bitly.com/LvLom7 ) and the Pallimed blog ( http://bitly.com/LvN5Qn )

* Announce beginning of sessions and where they are located

* Share resources – Tweet about any resources you discover at the conference; be sure to include the speaker’s or originator’s name (userid) on the tweet.

* Discussion of topics –  If there was a topic or issue brought up at a presentation that you have a burning question about or want to explore more online, you can ask your Twitter community online and include the conference hashtag to extend the discussion to conference attendees.  Include the presenter’s userid and chances are they will jump in the online discussion.

* Jot down notes – Twitter can be used to capture key takeaways and interesting points made by the presentation. Be sure to include the name of the presenter and conference hashtag.  Stay away from tweeting all your notes. If you see that you are getting into some great conversations online as a result of a presentation at the conference, the etiquette is to post a few warnings that  an intense period of tweeting will be going on the next day on such and such topic.  That way people can tune out the tweets for a day if there are too much or prepare to watch what develops.

* Goodwill – Maybe you don’t want to be burdened with writing original posts, but you can still be part of the wave of influence by re-tweeting other people’s great posts. In sharing other people’s posts, you are basically complimenting the other person, which makes the original poster happy, and other people will not think you are a selfish ego-ist who only cares about your own thoughts. Besides social media is essentially about sharing, right?

* Connect with people – for this one, best if you start listening to tweets and tweeting before the conference so you can connect with people who are attending.   Watch the conference hashtag a couple weeks before the event to get ideas on who to reach out to and schedule an in-person meeting with.  Use the conference hashtag to ask who is going.

* Twitter as Conversation Starter - While you are posting about an interesting point, people at the conference and those not at the conference may find that point interesting and may ask you a question and engage you in further discussion.

* Setup tweetups – if you have an interest area you want to get several people’s minds together on, setup a tweetup – in-person meeting that is promoted through Twitter. Tweet asking for suggestions on where to meet. Take Twitter conversations into in-person meetings or tweetups as soon as possible.  Twitter is great for making an initial contact, but if you want the connection to last, you need to distinguish yourself and the easiest way to do that is for you to meet in person.  Similar to reading and researching a travel destination, it is entirely different being there in-person vs. conversing online.  The in-person mode is always the best for making rich connections.

* Photo - Make sure your Twitter photo is recent and not your logo so people can recognize you.

Following the Annual Meeting on Twitter

In the Twitter search box, type in the hashtag “#AACPAM12” and it will provide you with a stream of the Tweets with that hashtag.  Note that you cannot “follow” a hashtag from the Twitter webpage.  You must refresh the browser to see any updates.