I participate in a few Twitter chats and even founded one a long time ago. They’re a great way to engage with a group of folks that have common interests. If you’re trying to build a Twitter following, they’re an excellent outlet for sharing your knowledge and finding others to follow – many of whom will follow you back. They’re great learning tools, too.
I recently participated in an industry chat that went horribly wrong – a disaster of small proportion. Why small proportion? Nobody saw it. Here are a few lessons from that chat for anyone considering Twitter chats as a marketing tool:
- Promote – To have a successful Twitter chat, you have to promote it. Just because you built it doesn’t mean they’ll come. Just like anything else where you want people to be there, you have to touch them multiple times in different channels. Unless you have a really large, devoted audience, just promoting on Twitter won’t work. Make it a part of your other channels.
- Know your audience – I should have known the chat was going to fail when a well-known voice in the industry tweeted “Why are so few XXXXX using Twitter and how do we get them to engage?” If you know that people in your industry are not on Twitter, why are you there trying to engage them?
- Be careful with guests – This chat had a guest who was well-known in the industry. That was probably the biggest disaster of all. He wasn’t going credible on Twitter, as he had fewer than 20 followers – his account had been set up just for the chat. His inexperience with the platform and engaging with others on Twitter shone through, causing him to…
- Sell hard, which is social media taboo. It also made him appear arrogant and inauthentic – not really a guy you would follow.
- The moderator had prepared questions. The guest had prepared responses. They seemed canned and did not invite discussion. They were generic and didn’t offer insight specific to the industry.
- The guest seemed to be actively ignoring questions from other participants.
The moral of this story? Make sure your guest understands Twitter and that he’s supposed to be conversing, not selling. You might want to rehearse, too, and then read the transcripts to see how the guest comes across.
- Engage – The chat moderator for this one was in a bit of bind but obstinately pushed forward as if nothing was wrong, and made no attempt to engage the audience themselves. There were some great questions being asked by the other chat participants, and the moderator could very well have responded, or asked the other participants for feedback. In other words, opportunities to turn the chat around seemed to be offered, but none taken. It’s okay to have a voice as a moderator, particularly if your chat guest is going south fast.
- Provide opportunity for further discussion – In the case of this chat, the moderator may have decided that since the chat went sideways so completely a transcription would only further embarrass them, but using a service to transcribe the chat and releasing the transcription to the audience often generates more discussion.