How to Create a Twitter Chat
Twitter provides amazing opportunities to connect with communities and conversations regardless of geographic locations. Using Twitter to conduct chats amongst these communities is another powerful means of connecting people and promoting ideas. By using the "#hashtag" symbol and a little planned coordination, you can create an effective chat for any group on Twitter.
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Instructions
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Choose a topic of conversation that is specific to a group of Twitter users you are connected to on the platform, such as travelers, artists or journalists.
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Send a message to your followers about the time and topic of the chat and confirm the topic with your audience. Ask for feedback about possible topics to help steer the conversation as you moderate the chat. Offer an email address as well for those wishing to request longer topics of discussion when you are in the planning phase.
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Assign a "#hashtag" symbol to the chat and send this announcement out to your followers. The hashtag is used to categorize and organize tweet and is placed directly before a word or acronym. Tell everyone they must include this hashtag in order to see the discussions during the chat. For example, if you are having a chat about the real estate industry every Tuesday, you may use a #RETUES hashtag to organize the conversation.
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At the designated time, begin the chat and ask everyone to introduce themselves and their connection to the topic. Be sure that the hashtag is included in every tweet.
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Tips & Warnings
Be sure the hashtag is something short as Twitter only allows 140 characters per message.
As the moderator, have a clear topic in mind or a series of questions to keep the dialogue on track. Assign the questions a hashtag as well, like #7 for the seventh question, as people will jump in and out of the discussion and may need a point of reference.
Notify your followers that a chat is about to occur so they can be prepared for an onslaught of updates coming from you in their Twitter feed. Most people recognize that a chat is occurring when they see a large number of updates from you.
If using a third-party application, such as Tweetdeck.com or Hootesuite.com, designate a column on the user-interface for the designated hashtag of your chat. This will bring all the chats into one column and you can read and interact with the conversation in a chronological and organized manner.
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