On September 12th, 2008, I did a 24-hour non-stop Twitter marathon to raise awareness and funds for congenital heart defects. The Heart Kids Tweetathon raised a little over $5,600 during the event (you can donate here, if you wish) and reached an audience of thousands with the message of Congenital Heart Disease awareness.

Here are some lessons I learned from the event that may be of use to you, if you consider doing one like it.

Selling a product is easier than selling an idea or concept.

I probably would have raised more money by creating and selling an infoproduct instead of doing the Heart Kids Tweet-a-thon. Seriously. Though the visibility and awareness building benefits made it worthwhile.

The toughest part is getting ‘buy in’ from supporters.

Once they are convinced about what you’re doing, the sky is the limit to what impact you can collectively make. I fielded some tough questions from first-time CHD fans - and answering them was the best investment in the event.

Most people won’t come through on what they promise.

Not because they don’t want to or do it intentionally. Often schedules are over-booked. Unexpected things happen. Emergencies or crises intervene. Or priorities simply change. Don’t depend too much on someone else’s promises to make your event work.

Last minute scrambling is practically unavoidable.

I started asking for content submissions 3 weeks back. Out of 36 submissions, 9 reached me AFTER the tweet-a-thon began! That’s fairly typical. Deadlines provoke action. Be ready to cope.

5% or less of your tribe are passionate evangelists.

9 out of 10 people you contact with your message will ignore it totally. The tiny group of evangelists will however help you achieve any goals you set - even impossible ones. Don’t get disillusioned at the apathetic crowd. Focus on the subset that deeply cares. They are your champions and rock-stars!

Passion trumps everything else.

I got more visibility and made a bigger impact from passionate people talking about the event than from even the owners of huge lists or who had thousands of followers. The difference is one casual tweet versus multiple INTERESTED ones.

And there are also a few technical ‘tricks’ I learned during the event.

Have backups (Web access, content, scripts)

Hard drive crashes, corrupted files and worse can ruin an event like a 24 hour tweet-a-thon.

Use separate Twitter accounts

In all, I posted close to 200 tweets in the 24 hours of the Heart Kids Tweetathon. If I had used my primary account, chances are most followers would have left - or complained loudly.

Use multiple browsers (or computers)

I was logged in to both my primary account and the tweet-a-thon account during the event. This was possible by opening them in different browsers - one in Firefox, the other in Flock.

Summize.com (Twitter search) gives useful snapshots

At any given time, I could check on the conversations happening around the event across Twitter. Very interesting. And inspiring too.

Hopefully these tips will be of some use to others planning a tweet-a-thon in the future. If you have any of your own, please share them in a comment below.