Live Tweeting Report
In our live tweeting project we chose to cover the Lebanese American University’s Career and Internship Fair. We chose this particular event for the following reasons. Primarily, since most of our followers on twitter are LAU students we considered targeting the LAU audience. However, this wasn’t solely our plan, our purpose was to broaden our circle and reach LAU students that are beyond our friends list. Secondarily, as journalism students we thought about the newsworthiness of this event to our target audience. The event is proximate, because it took place on the LAU campus, it is prominent due to the fact that it is an annual event, which makes it well known; furthermore, it has an impact because a lot of students may land internships and jobs through this fair.
From the live tweeting experience we learned how to tell a story on a social media platform. We also learned about consistency because twitter limits us with a specific number of characters thus, we had to build a meaningful story out of pictures, videos, and hyperlinks. Nevertheless, this experience taught us how to prepare for a live coverage.
1. Mapping all relevant social accounts:
First of all we searched for relevant hashtags to promote our story, we went to the LAU twitter account to see what hashtags are they using to promote the fair. However, in our search we found out that the event had no hashtags because LAU’s Career and Internship Fair doesn’t get coverage on twitter. We then resorted to mentioning @LebAmUni, which is LAU’s official account on twitter, aiming to reach the largest scale audience of LAU students. Our second step was to create one main hashtag to give a consistent presence to our twitter stream; we came up with three hashtags #GoToWork, #StudentsAtWork and #LAUFair. We figured that the first one doesn’t relate to the event or the audience, thus we had to choose between the other two. #StudentsAtWork on the other hand relates to the audience but doesn’t specifically imply that the work opportunities are inclusive to LAU students. In addition, it is also considerably long to use as a hashtag. Thus, we chose to use #LAUFair as our main hashtag because it is relatively short, which makes it comprehensible, and it relates to both the event and the audience.
2. Audience research:
As mentioned, our target audience is LAU students, and since this event doesn’t get any coverage on twitter, there were neither influencers nor related conversations about LAU’s fair. Thus, to reach the LAU students we mentioned LAU’s official accounts on our tweets. Our second step was to anticipate what aspects are most relevant to our audience, so we asked ourselves; if someone was covering the Career and Internship Fair, what would we, as LAU students, be interested to see? As students we always struggle to navigate the LAU fair, so we provided a list of the visiting companies, accompanied by the number of each one’s both. We also provided tips for the students to simplify their search. Moreover, we provided instructions on how to prepare one’s CV before going to the Fair, and suggested for the students the go to place in case they struggled with finishing their CV. Lastly, to convince the students to go to the fair we provided video interviews to grab their attention and pictures of students applying to jobs and internships.
3. Develop a work schedule for your coverage:
To achieve coherence and complement each other’s work, we revised and edited the tweets together. We also divided the work between us so that each member of the group has his/her role in the live tweeting experience. Rana was responsible of writing the descriptions and coming up with the hashtags, Sally was responsible of taking pictures and conducting an interview with the organizer, and Ahmad was responsible of taking pictures and conducting an interview with a prominent company. We also scheduled our tweets to post every hour, starting from the hour the fair opened its doors for students. Both Rana and Sally did background research about the fair, they searched the LAU website for details and asked organizers for in-depth information, the findings where then tweeted prior to the day of the event in order to introduce the stream of the tweets. The 5 Ws and H were introduced in Rana’s first tweet prior to the day of the event. The tweet introduced when the fair will take place (10 am till 4 pm), where is it going to be held (LAU Beirut), and by who (LAU). It also included a brochure that stated why the event is taking place (network face to face with experts of your field), and how (join the fair).
The tweets were then put together in a moment to form a story. In organizing the tweets we used the inverted pyramid sequence. We started with the tweet that introduced the 5Ws and we continued from the most important tweets, such as the list of the companies, the guidelines, how to prepare a CV, and the video interviews to the least important tweets, which included pictures, quotes, and the concluding sentence. The scale that we used to priorities some tweets over the others is; how much is this tweet beneficial for the students? And how much can it impact the audience?
4. Our Limitations:
We had some limitations in our promotional campaign. We were too ‘nice’ while covering the event that we didn’t mention the negatives, such as the underrepresentation of a lot of majors, which is a debatable issue that we should’ve raised. Most of the visiting companies were banks and business organizations (total number of 8), however, there was only one communication institution and zero institutions who professionalized in TV/Film or Performing Arts. We could’ve also used infographs to insert data and statistics in an appealing way. The list that we made about the visiting companies and their booths’ numbers for example could’ve been represented in a map or as an infograph to grab attention and get more impressions. We also disregarded the population of LAU graduates who are still unemployed, and didn’t find a way to target them through our hashtags.
5. Tweets analysis:
The three most engaged tweets are:
Rana’s tweet (26 engagements: 10 link clicks, 7 hashtag clicks, 5 profile clicks, 4 media engagements) included a list of the visiting companies with the number of their booths. The hashtags used are #Myjsc224 and #LAUFair.
Sally’s tweet (24 engagements: 16 media engagements, 3 likes, 3 profile clicks, 2 detail expands) included a picture with a caption “LAU students making use of the opportunity of meeting with experts from different fields”. The hashtags used are #LAUFair and @LebAmUni was mentioned.
Ahmad’s tweet (23 engagements: 14 media engagements, 3 detail expands, 2 likes, 2 profile clicks, 1 retweet, 1 hashtag click) included a video interview with an HR at Amideast. The hashtags he used are #LAUFair #Myjsc224 and he mentioned @LAUComm and @LebAmUni
The three least engaged tweets are:
Sally’s tweet (1 engagement) included a hyper link with a caption “Here’s how you prepare your CV for tomorrow!” The Hashtag used is #LAUFair
Ahmad’s tweet (1 engagement) included 21 characters. The hashtags used are #LAUFair #Myjsc224 and @LebAmUni was mentioned.
Ahmad’s tweet (2 engagements) included a quote “Thankful that LAU gives us the chance to see the market today,” says management student Lara Moukalled. The Hashtags used are #LAUFair #Myjsc224 and @LabAmUni was mentioned.
We conclude that tweets that don’t contain media gain less engagements; in addition, those that include pictures and videos gain more engagements than those that include hyperlinks. Moreover time plays a critical role because those that had very little engagements and those that gained a lot of engagements had similar hashtags and mentions but were tweeted on different time intervals.
After this experience Rana, Sally and Ahmad gained 2 followers each. However we can neither know who and from where these followers are nor can we know if our reached audience matches the one we targeted because our total number of followers does not exceed a specific number.
6. Grading:
Workflow — 1 / 1 point
• Complete and thoughtful workflow plan
Quality of the Reporting — 4 / 5 points
• Choice of event
• Informative quotes from three (3) people. Full names, ages, and occupation for each source required.
• Accurate and complete information gathered (The 5 W’s)
• Inclusion of photos, videos, infographs
Quality of the Presentation — 4 / 4 points
• Clear, compelling headline that use key words
• Quality of writing
• Quality of media
• Organization of information
Effort/Creativity — 4 / 5 points
• Compelling/interesting/fun content
• Appropriate choice of hashtags
• Experimentation/risk
• Engagement with community or discussion
• Unique content that is not repeated elsewhere
Total: 13 / 15 points
