Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 5: Hosting Twitter Chats

In This Chapter

• Reaping the benefits of Twitter chats
• Creating a hashtag
• Using Twitter chat tools
• Promoting and hosting a Twitter chat

Twitter chats are a way for people with similar interests to come together and discuss relevant information regularly. Generally, Twitter chats happen at regular intervals (usually weekly). Twitter chats, when done well, are an excellent way to build and maintain community.

This chapter helps you determine whether a Twitter chat matches your business goals and needs, explains how to choose the best hashtag for your chat, and introduces you to tools to help you manage your chats effectively. If you're concerned that no one will show up to the chat, don't worry, we also share some ideas about where to find guests and how to promote your chat so that more people will come (and tell their friends). Finally, we give you a complete step-by-step run-through of how to host a Twitter chat.

Benefiting from Twitter Chats

Many brands are hosting Twitter chats as a way to connect with their communities. Hosted regularly, usually once per week, Twitter chats allow for a brand to discuss issues everyone in the community has to deal with, or share tips and ideas.

Twitter chats have many benefits:

• Create brand awareness. When you have an engaging presence on Twitter, people remember you.
• Get people talking about you. Not only will your hashtag get people noticing what you're talking about, but if your community has a good time at ...