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Live Tweeting at a Golf Tournament! We will be Tweeting from the following account @TimeToPlay_Golf and on Facebook . As your keen Tweak Your Biz Golfer, I will be live tweeting on behalf of Fáilte Ireland’s “Golf Ireland  Time to Play” team at this year’s Ladies Irish Open. 

The event will take place at Killeen Castle in Co. Meath on the Bank Holiday weekend from the 3rd to the 5^th August. By live tweeting, we hope to help raise the profile of the tournament and Irish golf on the Twitter stage. In this blog post, I’ll detail what live tweeting from an event should look like.

So what will we be Live Tweeting about this week?

• During the tournament we will tweet about players, shots they are about to play and shots they have hit.
• We will take pictures, some fun and some not so fun and up-load them via Instagram.
• We will comment on the beautiful surroundings @KilleenCastle and hopefully some good Irish weather???

Related: Ireland And The Business Of Holidays – An Interview With Niall Gibbons Of Tourism Ireland

Twitter & Golf

Using Twitter as part of the event is a great way to engage our audience:

• Give live scoring up-dates from the course.
• Watching the leader boards closely, re-act and report on the players making a move.
• Twitter is very popular among professional golfers so we will be able to engage with them, as we report on their scoring, @mention them and some may even @reply after their rounds.

Irish Ladies Players Participating

We have three Irish professional golfers in the field, plus two of the most exciting golfers in the world

• 

  The Maguire twins arrive at Killeen Castle

  The Maguire twins, Leona and Lisa - these 17 years olds are already seasoned amateurs,  hail from Ballyconnell, County Cavan and play their golf in the Slieve Russell Golf club. A big future in the professional ranks is predicted for the twins but that is a while off yet.

• @RebeccaCoakley, @DelaneyTara and @DanielleMcVeigh.  Checking in with them over the last two weeks in the run up to the #LadiesIrishOpen,  they are really looking forward to the event.

We hope that you will join in the Live Tweeting fun and you may even be inspired to pick up the clubs and start playing Golf. What better may than to spend your leisure time than shooting #birdies and #pars walking in some of the most picturesque parts of Ireland.

Related: Irish Tourism Fights Back! #IRLday and Shamrock Urself Case Studies

Tips for covering an event on Twitter:

1. Create Your Own Hashtag: Using an event hashtag gives your audience a twitter search topic that is to easily follow. The hashtag also ensures that your Tweets will be part of the larger conversation.
2. Research: Make a list of the names, Twitter handles and any websites you will be talking about / routing people to. Pre-event put the website links though a URL shortener.
3. Get the word out ahead of the event: Alert your followers that you’ll be Live-tweeting in the run up to the event – include the event hashtag, for example, #ladiesirishopen, in all of your event promotions such as blog pieces, website features etc. If you have printed material to support the event, you’re your event hashtag and your twitter account. Promote off Twitter. You should also notify your Facebook fans, blog readers, LinkedIn connections, etc that you will be live tweeting during the event.
4. Tweet Using a Twitter Client: Use a platform such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to keep track and to monitor the event – respond and retweet where appropriate.
5. A picture tells thousand words: Photos and Twitter go together, especially when they show scenes that your followers don’t usually get to see. Use a tool like TwitPic or Instagram or to tweet the photo out.
6. Give people a sense of place: We will feature interesting facts, behind the scenes photos, stories etc – give your audience the insider perspective – information they will not get anywhere else. Tweet important quotes, actions, developments, observations, crowd reactions – not a transcript of the event! It is a bit like Radio commentary really, you have to set the scene and paint/up-load the pictures. Remember that it’s not about the number of tweets you get out there – it’s about the quality of the ones you produce which will get the most RT’s.

Join in the fun! Follow the live tweeting action of this year’s Ladies Irish Open #ladiesirishopen

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