With the tweet chat tips in this post, you can host a great Twitter chat and position yourself as a leader within your field.
Tweet conversations are a powerful way to engage your audience on Twitter and increase your influence on social media.
Here are some of the benefits of hosting and participating in Tweet conversations:
- Position yourself as an authority
- Create greater brand awareness
- Build relationships with influencers
- Get more Twitter followers
- Connect and engage with a wider audience
- Present relevant, helpful and useful content about a topic
- Position yourself as an expert
What is a Twitter chat anyway? A tweet chat is a live event on Twitter where all questions are focused around a common topic.
Sometimes people call tweet chats Twitter, these two terms mean the same thing, however I prefer the term tweet chat.
There is usually a moderator and a host or multiple co-hosts leading the conversation. The moderator asks the questions and the host(s) start the conversation by answering questions and engaging with the audience.
To keep the conversation within common topics, official tweet conversation hashtags are used.
A specific time is also set so that everyone is on the same page when the tweet conversation is happening.
Here are twenty of my best Twitter chat tips so you can crush it the next time you attend one of these awesome Twitter events.
1. Promote your Tweet in advance
By promoting your tweet conversation in the weeks and days leading up to it, you increase your chance of it being a success.
One way to do this is by creating a social tile that you can easily share with your social networks to help spread the word.
Below is an example of a social tile of a tweet conversation I recently hosted for IBM.
2. Participate before you organize
By participating in tweet chats before you host, you’ll find out firsthand exactly how a tweet chat plays out.
Plus, if your answers stand out, there’s a good chance you’ll be invited to participate or host a conversation in the future.
3. Introduce yourself and announce your Tweet
Get people excited with a fun intro tweet that lets people know your tweet chat is about to start and how they can join.
4. Choose a Custom Tweet Chat Hashtag
By creating a custom tweet conversation hashtag, you make it easy for everyone to follow the conversation.
The potential bonus effect of this is if enough people use your hashtag, it can result in your tweet conversation trending.
If your tweet chat is trending, then it can bring a ton of new people into the conversation and create a lot of additional exposure for the topics you’re covering.
5. Create images that contain the questions and hashtag of the Tweet conversation
With branded graphics featuring Twitter chat questions and the hashtag, you make it clear who’s leading and moderating the conversation.
The graphic below from Hootsuite is a good example of the right way to use images for a Twitter chat.
6. Keep your questions short and sweet
As you may already know, tweets can only be up to 140 characters long.
Since you want people to engage with your content, keep your questions short and straight to the point.
That way people can respond succinctly and still have room to include your chat hashtag in the tweet.
7. Pre-write your Tweet chat responses
By writing your Twitter chat responses, you’ll have more time to think them through and back them up with research.
This way you can quickly answer questions in the tweet chat and then shift your focus to engaging with the responses other people are sharing.
8. Create a Facebook event for the Tweet conversation
Creating a Facebook event for a chat allows you to invite people you know personally to participate in your tweet chat.
IBM does this within the futurist community on tweet chats hosted by futurists and it works quite well.
9. Make the conversation more fun with GIFS
According to Tyler Menzel, GIPHY’s editorial director, people who use GIFs in messages are 30 percent more likely to get a reply and are more likely to have conversations that last twice as long.
While I don’t have GIF reports directly linked to Twitter, my personal experience has been that tweets containing GIFs often get more engagement than plain text tweets, so I definitely recommend using GIFs in conversations with tweet.
10. Invite influencers to participate
To maximize the reach and engagement of your tweet conversation, invite special guests and influencers to participate.
This can create a win/win situation where value is added from the influencer’s knowledge plus more people will get involved because of the influencer engaging their audience.
Tweepsmap, Followerwonk, and Buzzsumo are three cool tools you can use to find influencers.
11. Choose a Tweet Chat Time in tact
Twitter’s analytics tools are able to detect the best time of day to tweet based on your following.
The chart below was created for me by Tweepsmap based on my Twitter followers and their time zones.
By scheduling a tweet chat when your tweets have the greatest reach, you’ll give your tweet chat questions the best chance of getting engagement from your followers.
12. Add your Chat to a Twitter chat directory
The Tweet Reports website has a Twitter chat schedule where you can add your own Twitter chat.
Twubs also has a Twitter chat list where you can promote your tweet chat or find one to join.
13. Connect with people who join Chat
By being active in tweet conversations, you’ll find that many people will follow you when they like the replies and content you’re sharing
You can increase this effect and get more Twitter followers by engaging with people in a Twitter chat and then connecting with them.
When you start connecting with people you have engaged in a conversation with on Twitter, your follow rate will be very high.
14. Reward people for participating
Show appreciation for those who participate by retweeting the valuable insights they share.
The more you can thank people who join, the better your chances are that they will engage with you and join the conversations you host in the future.
Gift certificates, free trials, or exclusive coupons for your products or services are three ways you can reward people for engaging in your tweet conversation.
15. Use Tweet Chat Tools
Tweet chat apps can help make managing the chaos of a tweet conversation easier.
The tweet chat tools I recommend checking out are:
- Tweet Chat (For creating a seamless stream to make your tweet chat more manageable)
- Twubs (Good place to record your tweet chat hashtag to help it get exposure)
- Twchat (Another place to record a Twitter chat and create a “room”)
Another Twitter tool that works great for tweet conversations and much more is Hootsuite. With Hootsuite you can create multiple columns so you can track a conversation hashtag in your tweets, mentions and more all on one screen.
16. Share your mentions with a wider audience
Sometimes in a tweet conversation it makes sense for your @mentions to go to the entire audience, not just the person you’re replying to.
This will help your tweets reach more reach so that more people can engage in your tweet conversation.
To send a tweet when you mention someone to all followers, start your tweet with a period. This way your tweet will go to all your followers instead of just those who follow you and the person you’re mentioning.
Trump explains how it’s done below.
17. Share the story on your blog
After hosting a Twitter chat, I recommend doing a recap post on your blog and sharing the best responses and insights.
If you use a self-hosted WordPress blog to share tweets like I did in this post, it’s as easy as copying in the URLs of the tweets you want to share.
18. Create a TweetChat Widget
With one Twitter search widget you can create an interactive interface so you can turn any website you add into a portal for your tweet chat.
Below is what your Twitter widget might look like if you choose the dark color theme.
19. Thank people for attending
Saying thank you to the people who participated in your conversation is a great way to wrap things up.
If you really want your thank you to make a lasting impression, write it by hand and mail it to the person you’re thanking.
A little appreciation often goes a long way.
20. Turn Tweet chat replies into evergreen content
By taking the best responses from the tweet conversation and turning them into graphics, you can create evergreen content that can be used long after the tweet conversation has ended.
Conclusion
We hope you enjoy these Twitter chat tips! If you found this post valuable, it would be great if you could share it with your Twitter followers. 🙂
Feedback
Have you participated in or hosted a tweet chat before?
Let us know your best Twitter chat tips with a comment below!
