By Janette Speyer and Katrina McNeill, Web Success Team

We all know that Twitter is a great format to use in promoting yourself or your company online. What not everyone knows (yet), is how to use Tweet Chats as a tool to gain even more exposure through Twitter. If you haven’t ever joined or held a Tweet Chat or don’t know why you would, keep reading!

What is a Tweet Chat?

A Tweet Chat is a public twitter conversation about a specific topic which is held online on a specific day and time and can be followed using a specific #hashtag (e.g. #wholistichealth or #SocialGeek911). There are many ways to run a Tweet Chat such as; have a formal agenda with a speaker that people are interested in chatting with, hold an open discussion between all participants (perhaps prompting topics as it goes along), give away prizes for answering questions during the chat. There are many choices for format, think about your audience and decide what’s compatible with your brand.

Steps to Take

Decide on a topic, communicate the topic and it’s hashtag to your followers (in all social media formats) and then the discussion “moderator” and fellow tweeters can use TweetChat.com to make following the conversation easier. TweetChat.com is a tool which puts all tweets related to your hashtag in one place, making them easier to follow. Remember to have content ready to present right away, otherwise you could lose people who just came in to see what the chat was all about and end up leaving because they think it’s boring or maybe it was cancelled.

How to Benefit

Now that you have held your Twitter Party (another name for a Tweet Chat), you can find out your Tweet Chat stats by going to Tweetreach.com. This site will show you this hashtag’s reach, how many tweeted it, how many replied to it, and how many retweets it had. It also shows your top contributors in this discussion and a detailed timeline. A tip: This is your place for leads! Follow all of the people who got involved in the discussion, because they obviously related to the topic somehow.

Takeaways

It’s always good to have more avenues to network, so why not try Tweet Chats? You could try joining one and seeing what it’s all about if you aren’t sure yet. Look here to find some of the most popular weekly chats and choose one to help you get acquainted. Now that you know the inner workings of a Tweet Chat, hopefully you can see what a great new form of exposure it could be for you.

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