The blog I kept talking about is finally here, combining my love for my favourite social network and my favourite gig of running events. Here’s the tricks you can use to make running an event through the Twittersphere just that little bit easier and more likely of success.

Twtvite

Basically an invitation application through which you can send event details to tweeps everywhere. You can limit the number of RSVPs, see and receive comments from who has RSVD’d, display tweets related to your event (along with #hashtags*), display it on Google maps and calendars, AND you can embed it on your website. I’m not sure of any event managers who would be willing to sacrifice Facebook events from their social media strategy in order to focus just on Twtvite, but it might just be further along the road for that to occur.

Twtpoll

Twtpoll is quite the sweetie for very simple market research on Twitter and, like Twtvite, Twtpoll is run by @Twtapps, who regularly improve their apps for Twitter. Not sure if your event will run hot? Just ask your followers. I’ve used it to pin-point preferred dates, times, venues… polls are awesome!

TwitterCamp

Show off what others are saying about your event while you’re enjoying it! TwitterCamp is a desktop application that allows you to monitor tweets from your event attendees. The application was built for an event and since then has developed further, using the Adobe AIR runtime and Twitter Search API. The application is especially suited for running on large displays such as plasmas, LCDs, and projectors. I even hear you can customize the interface, but to what degree I haven’t explored as of yet. 

Pretty much all you have to do is have a large monitor connected to a PC, both Adobe AIR and TwitterCamp, mess around with the aesthetics a little, then make sure that the screen can be read easily by attendees. Bingo! The easiest way to show off your fantastic and up-to-date events 2.0 skills.

Retweetist

Keeps track of who is retweeted the most, you included! Handy to view what event tweets people find interesting. However it seems to be merely a search of “RT” and your username within same tweets from other users, so if they merely mention retweeting in a tweet directed at you, this is included in the statistics. So not so accurate, but still pretty nifty to have the data in one place.

Splitweet

This the Twitter web client you need if you have multiple accounts and would like to keep track of mentions without going through an RSS feed with Twitter Search. Whether you have accounts for each event you’re managing or just one for yourself, you are able to see your timeline for each account all together, with icons for each user you’re following, relating to which account you’re following them with. Good to see which of your events has the more active Tweeps, as also other functions too. I like this one, although I’m still getting used to username links going to a profile hosted on Splitweet instead of the user’s Twitter profile.

Tinker

Tinker shows you relevant real-time conversations from social media sources like Facebook and Twitter. Basically, it is a function like the RSS function of Twitter Search. You can also embed your Tinker event stream on your website. I’ve not tested this one out a whole lot yet, but I can see it growing rapidly after it jumps out of beta mode and stops showing TV show premiers so much. (This is the Internet age now, no one cares about TV show premiers. And are they even an event as such? Argument for another day)

Tweetlater

I’ve used Tweetlater for only one thing; automatic tweets relative to allowing sponsors adequate exposure from an event account. NEVER use Tweetlater for automatic “thanks for following us!” direct messages. No tweep will come to your event if you do this. But as for the actual application, Tweetlater is quite useful for many, many things and hence it is quite powerful and can go wrong easily. I advise not going into Tweetlater lightly with the idea you will win the Twittersphere within a snap. 

Dishonourable Mention: Qwitter.

Enough has been said about them to justify this, trust me. Just before I started this blog post I received my second lot of 30-something e-mails from them within hours. Qwitter is a service I have tried to block a number of times with little success. I hope they’re working on it, but until then I’m using FriendorFollow to clean up my Twitter lists.

*Post coming up soon explaining hashtags and other Twitter tid-bits you’ve just GOT to know. Subscribe to my posts by email to find out when!