Guest Post: @TeriMKojetin -- Once Upon a Twitter Chat

Once Upon a Twitter Chat

@Eggdough’s Note: This is a guest post by @TeriMKojetin, Social Media & Community Coordinator, ICUC. @TeriMKojetin is one of the founders and hosts of #Luv4Social, a fantastic Twitter Chat which you must check out!

I've been involved in Social Media as a career for almost three years. I've started numerous blogs, written for several, opened Social Media accounts and work as a Social Media & Community Coordinator for ICUC, a Social Media management company, helping manage their Social Media pages.

I've been working on building my own personal brand as well. So, to kill the two proverbial birds with one stone, I started attending Twitter chats a few months ago. The more I participated, the more connections I made and the more I wanted to launch my own chat. Since I attend chats using Nurph, I already knew the platform I would host from.

After much searching I opened up @Luv4Social on Twitter and claimed the hashtag #Luv4Social. Still, afraid to take the jump, I asked fellow chatter, Carmella Lanni @vegecomgirl, to co-host with me. And so, on July 17 our first chat was launched. We actually merged an established chat, #UGCChat into #Luv4Social, which gave us the benefit of not having to struggle for an audience.

The process of holding a Twitter chat is fairly simple and takes a little planning to prepare and promote. I would strongly recommend not taking it on by yourself. I strongly suggest having one or more persons to share the tasks with. We have added three more people to our team and it's a huge help: Josh St. Aubin @JoshStAubin, Jennifer Radke @radkejen, and Kavita Chintapalli @kavita1010. I would also urge you to have a Twitter account from which to host the chat. Here are the steps to a successful Twitter chat session:

Scheduling a Chat on Nurph

Using Nurph as your Twitter platform not only makes scheduling a chat easy, but you can also have your chat room branded. You simply click on the "Create a Chat" button and fill in the information: name of your chat, topic, intro, date, time, hosts and questions. After that's done you save your information and Voila! Your chat is scheduled.

Promoting the Chat

Once you have your chat in place, it's time to promote. Here's where the advantage of having a separate account for the chat and several co-hosts comes in. You can tweet out the chat from several Twitter accounts this way. Be sure and give the name, date & time, topic and RSVP link back to Nurph. Encourage your invitees to use Nurph for participating. I'll explain in the next point the advantages to that.

Chatting Away

It's time to start your chat! And here's where using Nurph really shines. As you post each question (copy & paste from where you set the chat up in Nurph) it will appear at the top of the chat channel until you enter the next question, and so on. This way your participants don't have to search through tweets to find the questions. Each time you or someone tweets you will find 4 icons to the right of the tweet that allow you to reply, retweet and add to it, simply retweet and favorite. It makes it a breeze to fully participate in the chat. 

The Chat Replay

Your chat has successfully concluded. Keep the enthusiasm high for a past chat by providing a replay. There are several ways to do this, such as using a platform like Storify. But if you use Nurph to host your chat, you will have the added convenience of having the replay available to you shortly after your chat ends. You can play it at the speed it occurred or faster. It's a great way to go back and catch things you may have missed, pick up shared links and find people to connect with. And remember to tweet out the replay!

Checking the Stats

Once your chat is done, Nurph will provide statistics for you. You can find out how many people participated, the number of tweets, top contributors, most influential, most mentioned, and most retweeted. 

Nurph really is an all-in-one Twitter chat platform and I highly recommend using them. The ease of use and information provided is invaluable whether you're scheduling a chat, in the midst of it, or checking out how it went. It's Nurphtastic!

Teri Kojetin

Social Media & Community Coordinator, ICUC
Guest Blogger, Bad Rhino Rumblings

Twitter: @TeriMKojetin
LinkedIn: Teri Kojetin
About.me: Teri Kojetin
Email: terikojetin@gmail.com