Tweetchat

What is a Tweetchat? Do I want to participate?  How do I participate?

There are two definitions for Tweetchat:
1.  A live Twitter discussion about a specific topic.
2.  A website that allows you to easily participate in a chat.

Let's start with the first one.  A Tweetchat on Twitter is a live discussion at a set time about a specific topic.  Usually, the chats last about an hour.  There is a moderator who will Tweet a question and then participants will answer that question.  When you are participating in the chat, you want to use the hashtag that the moderator has chosen.

For example, Tuesday evening, we had a Tweetchat we call "SHRMCHAT." The moderator of this chat is Joan Ginsberg (you can find her at http://justjoan.joanginsberg.com).  We have this chat the second Tuesday of every month at 8pm EST.  Joan will post the questions ahead of time on her blog.  This gives you the opportunity to decide if it's a chat you would like to join as well as prep answers to the questions. 

Our chat this past Tuesday was on Conferences.  Joan tweeted a question about every 10 minutes. When she tweeted a question, it would look like this:

Q5. What are the 2 or 3 most important attributes of a successful conference director? #SHRMCHAT

Then if you wanted to respond to that question, you would answer with:

A5: Personality, Personality, Personality #SHRMCHAT

Remember, if you are using Twitter to participate, you need to type that hash tag with your answer or folks won't see it in the thread.  When I first started attending tweetchats, I used Twitter and the search feature to watch the threads come through.  However, if I wanted to respond, then I had to go out of the search function, tweet my response, and then go back into the search function to watch all the responses.

Thus - my good friend Becky Robinson (you can find her at www.weavinginfluence.com) told me about Tweetchat.com.  There are several different websites you can use to participate in tweetchats.  I like Tweetchat.com, myself.  They explain very simply how it works.  When you tell the application what hashtag you are following, it will automatically type that for you when you tweet a reponse.  It saves time!

Ok HR Twitter Pros, what else should our new friends to Twitter know about Tweetchats OR What Tweetchats should they participate in?

Remember, #SHRMCHAT is the 2nd Tuesday of the month at 8pm EST.  Hope to see you there next month!