What's a Twitter Chat?

I’m nominally active on Twitter, using it only when I remember, but I’ve got Tweetdeck always on in the background which ever-so-subtly lets me know who’s doing what and how they’re doing it. Every once in a while some folks I follow will all of a sudden become very active, seemingly in a conversation and after further investigation, I discovered that they actually were in a conversation, often with a large group of other people. The common denominator they used to identify themselves was a hashtag (#) followed by a code. Naturally I thought it was weird but I’m always curious so was keen to check it out a little closer.

Find the chat – The other day I saw that a #techchat was happening (about social media marketing for the high-tech industry) and Guy Kawasaki was the guest so I decided to jump into it.

Choose your tool – I use Tweetdeck so I set up a column with #techchat and was ready to roll. There are other tools but you can also go to twitter.com, login and put the hashtag into search and follow along that way.

Get Involved – I’m more of a lurker by nature so I sat back and followed along but there was a LOT of activity (sometimes too much) and plenty of interesting tidbits that others picked up on and re-tweeted which gave it a little more weight.

Follow up – I did re-tweet a few points from the Twitter chat and it yielded some interesting comments and discussions so from that alone, I can see the power of the platform. There’s also a transcript of the event if you feel like checking it out.

It still felt a bit weird and the amount of chatter was quite overwhelming but Guy was very interesting and the subject matter also appealing. The concept of the Twitter Chat is certainly an unusual one but the fact that it is free and the level of accessibility you have to thought-leaders is impressive and it seems that there is a subject for everyone.

My own philosophy about the these brave new Web tools is to just try it. We’re all trying to figure these things out but there are others who have just been able to figure things out a little earlier and we can all learn from them. Then you can decide for yourself if it’s right for you or your business.

Cheers,
Paul @flemo Fleming

PaulFleming is co-founder and VP of Interactive Services for Dinkum Interactive. A trained teacher, Paul has worked in a variety of forms of Internet Marketing but with a focus on SEO. Originally from Australia, he now resides in Philadelphia with his wife and 2 ankle-biters.