May 04, 2011
7 Ways to Build Community (and Interest) with Twitter Chats
Online chats have really evolved since the days when AOL was king. In this day and age of social media where our online conversations have been condensed down to bite-sized nuggets of 140 characters or less, chatting has moved from the IM chatrooms to Twitter. A natural progression, since Twitter is already being used by millions of people to converse with each other daily.
Enter Twitter Chats. While not a new concept (Twitter chats have been around for at least a few years), they're still fantastic for connecting with people in much the same way the original chatrooms allowed.
There are Twitter chats that happen daily for a variety of topics (check out this comprehensive list of Twitter chats to find one that interests you), and it's incredibly easy to join the conversation. Simply follow the assigned hashtag for the chat you want to participate in and include that hashtag in your chat-related tweets. Tweetchat is the foremost tool available for Twitter chats, allowing you to easily follow a specific hashtag in a dedicated “room” and automatically include that hashtag in your tweets (so you don't have to type it yourself). Twitter chats usually take place at a certain scheduled time on a regular basis (check with the moderator of a particular chat for its schedule) and last for about 30 minutes to an hour.
It's equally easy to create and moderate your own Twitter chat, and it can be used as a powerful community-building, networking and marketing tool for businesses, events, associations and nonprofits. Here are 7 ways Twitter chats can be used to help you connect with your customers, prospects, base, members and others in your industry:
- Pre-event mingling: If you're a conference or event organizer, a Twitter chat can be a great way for attendees to mingle with each other before the event and get advice from both you and each other. An example of this is #nabchat, which is a Twitter chat we organized before the NAB Show (our client) for veteran and newbie attendees alike to connect with each other.
- Feedback: Let's say you're beta-testing a new product or service before it launches. Why not hold a Twitter chat with your beta testers to get their feedback? This also allows you to connect on a more personal level with those who may be your customers in the near future.
- Crowdsourcing: Along the same lines as using a Twitter chat for customer feedback, it can also be used to crowdsource ideas – i.e. event sessions, fundraising ideas, or even product ideas.
- Thought-leadership: If you're leading weekly Twitter chats about important topics within your industry or niche, you'll quickly establish yourself and your organization as a thought-leader. You might even consider engaging and partnering with an expert in your industry to share in leading your chats periodically. Engage 365, an online community for event professionals, does an excellent job of this with their weekly #engage365 Twitter chats, enlisting the help of industry experts to moderate on different chat topics.
- Interviewing an industry expert or leader: Twitter chats can also be used to conduct “Twitterviews” with other industry thought leaders (for instance, speakers at an upcoming conference). These are usually much more tightly moderated, with discussions and Q&As happening during a specific time period.
- Rallying your base and fundraising: Nonprofits and political campaigns can use Twitter chats to generate excitement and discussion around a specific cause or platform and encourage people to donate or get involved. An example of this is #SOSFood, which was a series of Twitter chats for food bloggers to help raise money for our client, Share Our Strength. The chats themselves were about food-blogging topics, but participants were encouraged to donate to Share Our Strength during the chats.
- Getting to know you: At the heart of all Twitter chats is simply getting acquainted and networking with your fellow Tweeps over a topic in which you share an interest!
How have you used Twitter chats or seen them used successfully as a marketing or community-building tool? Leave a comment and tell us about it?
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Technorati Tags: Twitter social media nonprofits associations events
Posted by Kari Rippetoe at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)February 10, 2011
Using Quora for Personal and Business Benefit
I joined Quora and have been using it for a couple of months, after seeing all the buzz about it on Twitter in recent months (and since it's my job to know about these things). Now, you might be thinking "ANOTHER social network? How am I going to keep track of this? And what use could this possibly be to me?" I don’t blame you for thinking this, because I thought the same thing at first. It seems like there's a new social networking site every week, with claims from all over the social mediasphere about how it's "the next big thing in social media." It can get a bit tiresome, ya know?
Now that I’ve had the opportunity to evaluate Quora, I want to give you my initial thoughts, as well as provide a few opportunities and uses for Quora for businesses.
What is Quora, anyway?
My first thought when I started using Quora was Oh, this is like a cross between Twitter and LinkedIn Answers with some Wikipedia thrown in. You create a profile, "follow" some topics (and people) in which you're interested, and post your own questions and/or answers to other questions. People can vote your answers up or down, comment on them, thank you for an answer, and even mark it as unhelpful (which essentially buries your answer). You can also follow individual questions within a topic to be alerted of answers that are added. So, there's a lot of following going on.
The Wikipedia-esque part comes in the ability for people to edit your answers. Well, you can "suggest" edits to the original poster that they can choose to accept. This is where I'm slightly confused, though. Why would you suggest edits to someone else's answer? It's their answer – why not leave a comment, or post your own answer? Maybe there's something glaringly incorrect about their answer, and rather than publicly call them out on it, you choose to suggest the correction. To me, though, this seems rather nit-picky. Am I wrong here?
That's great, but how can I use Quora?
I hear ya. You don't want to join yet another social network without knowing what you could possibly get out of it – both personally and business-wise. Let's go through a few of these uses and opportunities:
Building Thought-Leadership: Follow topics in which you have some expertise and answer questions in those topics. Provide well thought-out answers that will help to position you as a go-to expert on that topic. You also have the ability to describe your experience on a particular topic, which people see when you post an answer within that topic.
Content Marketing: The questions and answers you post on Quora can be great fodder for other content – like blog posts, for instance. Use your questions for a specific topic as the basis for a blog post to get your readers thinking about answers. Or, create a blog post from your answer (and the answers of others) to someone else’s question. And hey - you can even connect your Wordpress or Tumblr blog to Quora to make this easier!
By the way, Quora has a cool feature that gives you the ability to tweet a link to your answer to a question. This is great for cross-promotion between platforms, although I wish you could also post to your LinkedIn profile (makes sense, doesn't it?).
Research: Quora covers a wide array of topics, so it's dead easy to find a wealth of information on whatever you might be looking for. If you still can't answer your question from what's already there, post it and crowdsource answers!
Brand & Industry Monitoring: Run a search for an industry topic (like "Mobile Broadband") or a brand (like "Verizon") - the results are a treasure trove of information to help you gauge industry hot topics and customer pain points. It's a great way to listen and participate in the discussions going on - both for thought-leadership and for customer support.
Expanding Your Network: Sure, there are loads of people from my existing networks that I'm following and who are following me on Quora; but I've managed to find lots of new people as well through mutually-followed topics and questions. These are incredibly smart people who I consider to be top of their game and post some really helpful answers to questions.
Are you using Quora? How have you found it useful (or not, even)? Tell us your opinion!
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