Our Man in Shanghai:The Art of the “Tweet &Travel”(Shout out for comments)

One of the best types of travelling experience is to know someone in a place you are visiting,who takes you to where the locals eat,drink etc,especially if it’s not in the brochures other travellers get from their hotels. By tweeting that you are visiting a new place and would like some local recommendations,you can get the local experience even if you did not previously know anyone there.

Hi David,

Do you mean,how to get a job live-tweeting events? I would say that it’s similar to writing a regular article –contact the editor of the publication/head of the event,and propose your live coverage of the event. Tell them why you’re the best candidate to do it,how it would benefit them,and why you’d have more reach/impact than another person.

Number of Twitter followers shouldn’t be the only metric,either. Some people may have tons of followers but neither they,nor their followers,are into golf,for example,so they’d be the wrong ones to live-tweet a golfing event.

The pay scale would probably be pretty low (your entrance to the event might be the only “pay”) but many organizations might see it as a way to get the attention of people who might otherwise not even know the event was happening.

Some sort of disclosure that you’re tweeting on behalf of the host would seem appropriate. Having gone through that minefield myself recently,I can attest that more disclosure is better than less.

I live-tweeted the Reader’s Choice Awards event for “Condé Nast Traveler”in fall 2008 –my travel expenses were paid but I didn’t get a salary. The magazine and I both saw it as a unique opportunity to highlight what they do each year with an extensive reader input survey.

Another issue is annoying your Twitter stream. I kinda spew a lot anyway,but if I’m live-tweeting I “never shut up.”I’m sure I’ve lost tweeps that way,tho I try to warn them &suggest they temporarily unfollow.

As someone who’s fallen into the new media publishing arena,Twitter’s an essential tool for me,Linda and Indie Travel Podcast in general.

We’ve built our audience,but —more importantly —it gives us a chance to meet all sorts of great people who have been travelling longer than us. We’ve picked up great opportunities too:the chance to go bungy jumping in NZ,get various products for review and collaborate with other writers and travel bloggers.

While we haven’t been given any “live-tweeting”gigs,people know that a Twitter-stream is part of what we publish and that’s important.