An Interactive Liveblogging Platform

Live blogs with G-Snap! are great for all sorts of events. For example, sporting events (high school football games for example), conferences, corporate communications, sales training, concerts, and more. There's really no limit.

We want to do everything we can to help you keep your viewers on your website. To add a G-Snap! live blog to your website, simply create an event, copy the embed code and paste it into your website. It's that easy. Give it a try now.

1. Talk to Your Audience

• Keep your audience in mind. Only cover the things that truly interest them.
• Try to keep your comments to actual event details but don't be afraid with interacting with the community. It's up to you to judge how you'd like to strike the balance.
• Utilize the "status" feature to communicate big events such as a team scoring or letting viewers know the conference is going to start in 5 minutes. Think of the staus as something similar to your Facebook status update.

2. Describe the Feeling

• Give your audience insight into the sights and smells of your event. For example, let them know the audience is unusually energetic or how the smell of cotton candy is permeating the air.
• It's always fun to let the audience know about the one visiting team fan sitting in the home team section trash talking as he's being escorted out.
• Bottom line, provide the details that aren't possible to digest if you're watching on TV or simply not able to attend.

3. Keep a Consistent Pace

• Possibly the most important tip we can give you is to keep a consistent pace. Inconsistent updates are a recipe for low audience numbers as they could think you've ditched them.
• If you are covering an event that is fast paced, consider asking someone to assist you. See below.
• Let the audience know if there is a break in the action (timeouts, in between quarters, halves, or periods, injuries on the field, problems with a demo, etc.). If it's you taking a break, let the audience know how long you will be gone for.
• If you are live blogging an event and you are utilizing the scoreboard or gameclock, try your best to keep it accurate. Also consider adding someone to your live blog to help you manage it.

4. Adding Media Increases Engagement

• As the moderator, the more polls, photos, videos, audio, Tweets etc you add the more engaged your viewers will be - and the longer they will stick around!
• Use creative, engaging descriptions when uploading your media. An uploaded photo with a lousy description won't be clicked on!
• Add a YouTube video directly by copying and pasting the YouTube URL as a comment.

With G-Snap!, it's easy to ask someone you trust to assist you with your event. In order to give them the appropriate recognition and power, simply click on "Additional Settings" in the Settings module and add their G-Snap! username. Some events require a second moderator to help with managing community comments or perhaps assisting with the game clock or scoreboard (for a sports based event). Either way, having multiple moderators is a great way to share the load.

Do you have an event that lasts multiple days? Are you worried about falling asleep because you're afraid of what people are saying in your event while you're not there? Don't fret, we've thought of you! Simply put your event into Standby mode and your viewers will not be able to comment - but they will be able to read. The next day, just set your event back to Live and you're reading to go! See? Now you can fall asleep comfortably counting your sheep, number of viewers, or whatever.

One of the things we think you’ll notice quickly is the need to hide a comment from the public view. You might also choose to restrict users from commenting without your explicit approval. At times, you might even need to ban someone from your live blog because of their attitude, mouth, or who knows what else. With G-Snap!, these actions have solutions designed just for you. We are constantly thinking about how to make live logging on G-Snap! a more manageable and enjoyable experience. Here are a few tips:

Tip #1: How to hide a comment

As a moderator, you have a different view of the live blog. We call this the console. Here, as comments come streaming in, you'll notice "[hide]" to the top right of every comment as you hover above. This is button does exactly what you think as it hides a comment from the public view.

Tip #2: Viewer comments require approval

Let's say you are live blogging a keynote speech for your CEO and you decide to show the live blog on the big screen. In order to maintain a certain level of quality, you don't want your viewers to be able to comment without you first seeing and approving/declining each comment. In this scenario, you can set moderation on when you create your live blog or in the settings module. Once this is set, you can approve comments as they come in to make them visible to your viewers.

Tip #3: OK, I've got a trouble maker on my hands! Now what?

Easy, ban them. Simply hover over their avatar if moderation is off or select the ban icon if moderation is on. From that point on, they'll be taken care of. Our moderation technology is second to none. We take this very seriously.

• Make sure you have the right plan from your mobile carrier. The right plan will avoid sticker shock when you get your next bill. By the way, this point is covered in the G-Snap! Terms of Use in case you didn't read it.
• Have a fully charged battery (and maybe a spare!). Also, if your phone has wifi, consider jumping on to a wifi network versus a 3G network as it will save battery life.
• It's best to keep your updates concise and coming in at a regular pace
• Add multimedia from you mobile often as that will relay exactly what's happening from the event
• Last but not least, most of our features that you have come to rely on in the Web/desktop version is also available to you on mobile (including moderation!).