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Tips on Live Blogging an Event

Over the weekend I asked readers how they suggest Live Blogging an Event. The resulting comments were really helpful so I thought I’d collect some of them together into a post on the topic here.

  • Travis Prinzi suggests that you use the opportunity to promote your Twitter or Plurk account by using those social media accounts to do the bulk of your updates with a few longer posts on your blog.
  • Chetan recommends using a video camera to record as much of the conference as possible and then edit and upload sessions during breaks.
  • Becky and Alrady shared some thoughts on capturing the ‘mood’ of a conference rather than just the information shared – mood being something that is hard for those following a conference online to get a handle on.
  • Karen recommended using CoveritLive as a tool for Live blogging an event (as did a few others).
  • impNERD encourages those live blogging events to take their time and focus upon quality rather than focussing upon just being ‘first’ to post something.
  • Melanie asked a question that I’m sure others would be grappling with also – ‘My concern is how do you balance live blogging with absorbing the info and still being a part of the conversation?’
  • Ollie talked about two tools, CoveritLive (already mentioned) and Sidepodcast – both look like being worthwhile tools to explore.
  • Nancy suggests the most basic yet most important tip that any Live Blogging Blogger could want to receive – ‘double-check beforehand that you will have internet access! ‘
  • Chuck shared some of his experience and how he uses multi-media (‘Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, the AgWired Blog, Ustream.tv, 12seconds.tv, and lots of uploaded audio interviews’) to bring his live blogging posts alive.
  • Will coded his own system that tracks what other people are ‘tweeting’ about an event to update them onto his blog.

The big winner in the comments section was definitely CoveritLive which was mentioned by a quarter of all comments in the post as a recommended tool.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. nice post! very informative as usual

    how do you like my site darren? its also about blog advice

    http://www.TheBusinessOfMyBusiness.blogspot.com

  2. Never heard of CoverItLive before reading this. Checked it out and it looks like a cool blogging tool. Thanks for introducing it!

  3. All great ideas! I’ll have to bookmark this for future use.

  4. I live blogged a conference once and one of the smartest moves I made was bringing a photographer. We developed a system ahead of time and by utilizing breaks I was able to share the whole conference experience including pictures every hour of the day.

    The response was amazing.

  5. Sounds great to me, some very nice ideas here. Excellent and bookmarked.

  6. Great tips Darren!

  7. Excellent advice. Thanks Darren and those who provided them.

  8. Thanks for the resources, Darren and everyone else. I need to absorb this.

  9. I second the notion of using twitter. Some people live blog and update their blog, which doesn’t work well with Google Reader (marks the item as read). Other readers may keep pulling the new post, which could be equally irritating. I enjoy twitter – it lets me see everyone’s views on the live event, and I can easily come in and out of the conversation.

    Plus, it doesn’t interfere with my normal “heavy” RSS reading – liveblogging tends to be lighter reading.

  10. These are some great tools and very useful….if you understand what you mean by live blogging. I do not…can you please eplain this to me

  11. Thanks for the link. *This* is what I love about problogger. You not only get great information from the Darren, but also great info from the commentators.

  12. Just heard about CoveritLive from here. Seems like a very useful tool. thanks for the information

  13. I like the point on “mood.”

    Information sticks more when there’s the “emotional” connection.

  14. Great tips, thanks for sharing! Live streaming is also a good one – during the Beijing Olympics I was hooked onto a live stream on my laptop 24/7.

  15. Too bad I missed your original call for suggestions. I would have shared my blog post from last year http://silenceandvoice.com/archives/2007/07/27/liveblogging-best-practices-2/ or my Northern Voice 2008 presentation on liveblogging http://www.slideshare.net/robinyap/liveblogging-101

  16. You could use ustream.tv and a web cam. If that is allowed :P

  17. What about getting several people to attending an event to sign up to FriendFeed, encouraging them to bring camers, videos and laptops, and getting them going. Then projecting the result onto a screen so fellow attendees see what is happening. Afterwards, it can be used as a catalogue of all that happened.

  18. I followed a live news story yesterday, the first time I’ve done so for my site.

    The story was the demonstrations at Newcastle United football club over the departure of their manager. The media expected trouble, and there was, but I was the only one around to capture it in some way.

    I used an iPod Touch with the WordPress app, which is simple and brilliant for updating or creating new blogs in moments. When I was out of wifi range, I switched to the site’s Twitter feed, which saw a lot of action at the end of the day when crowds of fans charged the police.

    For the first time I recorded video on my camera, and cut together my first video with graphics and images on iMovie.

    My site was the only Newcastle-based news outlet to cover the event in real time and produce video on the same day. I loved it! There’s a round-up of links posts and video here:

    http://newcastlecentric.com/news/live-blog-nufc-protests-in-newcastle

    The only problem I had was that there was only one of me – when the crowd trouble occurred, I foolishly Twittered instead of recorded the event on video, thinking it was better to relay the news live than record it for later viewing. Dur! Still, I’ve learned for next time, though another pair of hands would have definitely helped.

    Paul @ newcastlecentric.com

  19. Thanks for the tips, Darren! I’ve always wanted to do something like this for my blog when I go to events in my niche, but I don’t have the equipment to do it; investing in an iPhone/iPod Touch is out of the question at the moment.

    I did blog about an event back in the spring, but I wasn’t able to bring my laptop, so I couldn’t post about it until I got home… The day before, I noticed a lot of search traffic leading back to previous posts about the event. If I was able to bring my laptop, the results would have been awesome. But the next time I’ll go to an event, I should have the proper devices.

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