The best Twitter Chats appear effortless. The conversation flows fast and freely. There are compelling links shared and marketing messages that never seem helpful and informative - never spammy. There’s food for thought in the questions posed and answers and introductions to experts you might not have met. If there are prizes, the excitement builds and the winners are announced without any break in the event flow.
As natural and spontaneous as this seems during the event, you can be sure that behind every successful Twitter Chat, there is a lot of planning and effort. It’s very much like throwing a great party. The table is set, the candles are lit, music is playing, and the host or hostess is smiling and enjoying themselves.
They are smiling because they thought of every last detail before their guests showed up.
Here are the most tried and true tricks of the professional Twitter Chat host:
- Create an invitation. Whether you post the invite on Facebook, a blog or through a service like Twitvite, creating an invitation gives you a url to reference and retweet in order to make it easy for your guests to find you. Include information about the time, topic, hashtag and hosts. Remember to include which time zone the chat is hosted in.
- Prewrite and Pre Schedule Questions and Answers, and share with any panelists or guest hosts so that they can do the same. Standard Chat format uses shorthand to demarcate chat questions, such as: “Q1: What do you think about Twitter Chats?” and “A1: I always learn a lot during chats!” Don’t overschedule your chat with too many questions. Leave enough time for conversation to flourish. Generally 6-10 questions is plenty for one hour
- Compile a list of any and all links you might want to share during the chat and pre-shorten them with a trackable link shrinking service such as bit.ly
- Create a portal for chat participants to view the conversation, on a site like TweetGrid or consider creating one of Hashtracking’s Display Mode reports which allow you to follow along with and participate in the conversation, live, in real time.
- If you are giving away any prizes, decide on a method of pulling a winner. Will you be pulling from a list of RSVPs? If you wish to pull from the chat’s transcript, you can view tweet numbers on your Hashtracking transcript and use these markers along with random.org to generate the winners. Decide on plan, and who will assist, prior to your event
- Make introductions. Just like a good party host introduces guests, a good Twitter Chat host introduces panelists and experts.
- Get help. Leading a chat is hard work, and requires more than one person in most cases. Your chat will be more lively if you enlist experts to lead the conversation. If your chat is a weekly chat on a particular topic, consider featuring different experts each week. You should also enlist a a helper/assistant to keep and eye on the transcript and aid in answering questions. Stay connected with them during the chat via a secondary service such a Skype.
Do you have any other tips for Twitter Chat leaders? How do you prepare for a Twitter Chat?
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