A new occurrence for speakers today is tweeting during your presentation.  I know how you feel when that happens.  That’s why I have resorted to asking attendees to get in their one text before we start and during their breaks.

If you are speaking at a conference, be aware that the tweets and texts might be sent to the people currently  in your audience or on their way to the workshop. 

One conference speaker experienced this pitfall when they had low turnout for a seminar that previously had blowout attendance.  Evidently attendees tweeted “don’t come to this workshop, the speaker is not very good.”  On reading this many attendees decided to attend a different session and the speaker’s credibility was crushed.

Conversely, if you are a good speaker with an engaging style, the tweets would be “hurry up and get to this session.  The speaker is fantastic.”   This could turn a low turnout session into a blowout session and it’s all happening in real time.