How to Conduct a

Successful Twitter Chat

Carlos Chapman II, Partnerships & Outreach Coordinator CDC NPIN

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Objectives

• How to research & develop content for a Twitter chat

• What to include in a Twitter chat guide

• How to measure the success of a Twitter chat

• Best practices for Twitter chat engagement

Twitter Basics

Twitter Basics

Hosting a Twitter Chat

What is a Twitter Chat?

• Public scheduled

meeting where people

gather around a certain

topic and create an

online discussion on

Twitter by using one

unique hashtag

Benefits for Hosting a Twitter Chat

• Promote awareness of and participation in your

organization’s activities

• Increase conversations about certain topics, available

resources and tools on Twitter

• Expand depth of organizational conversations in your

network and develop new relationships

• Build your own organization reach and reputation on

Twitter

Pre – Planning Steps

Topic Selection

• Focus on needs of your

followers

• Listen!

• Area of expertise/ social

media goals

Creating the Hashtag

Hashtags should be

• Short

• Unique and creative

• Easy to type

• Focused around the topic

• Memorable

• Avoid double letters and symbols

Hashtag search Web sites

• www.twubs.com

• www.hashtags.org

• www.tagdef.com

• www.Twitter.com

Scheduling the Twitter Chat

• Select best day & time

• Avoid conflicts with

other pre - scheduled

chats

• Have a set schedule

• Include the time zone

Guest Selection

• Not mandatory

• Subject Matter

Experts

• Provide questions in

advance

• Offer Twitter tutorials

Script Development

• Roles/Staff

• Promotional Tweets

Scheduling tweets

• Topic Questions

• Tweet character limit is 140 (120 is ideal)

• Protocol guidelines (T1. A1. )

• Resource links

• Include hashtag in all tweets

• Script approval

Day of Chat

• Final script

• Meeting space prepared

TV Monitor

Conference phone line

• Suggested tools to run chat

www.tweetchat.com

www.twubs.com

www.hootsuite.com

www.twitter.com

After the Chat

• Follow-up on outstanding questions

• Identify influencers, potential guests for other chats

• Archive the chat

• Storify and other tools

• Evaluate and measure

• Announce the next chat

Measuring Success of a Twitter Chat

Why Evaluate?

Evaluating enables you to:

• Understand what’s working and what’s not

• Adjust and improve your chat topics

• Demonstrate the value of Twitter outreach via the Twitter

chat

• Understand your audience and influencers

Twitter Analytical Tools

• TwitterAnalyzer

• TweetStats

• Hashtracking

• Tweetreach

• TwitterCounter

• Tweriod

• PeopleBrowsr

• Socialbro

• Radian 6

Twitter Chat Measurements

• Metrics table

• Trending graph

• Top contributing participants

• Top contributing participants w/ most followers

• Geographic distribution

• River of News

Best Practices

• Prepare topic questions and content early

• Cross channel promotion

• Share questions with guests in advance

• Establish protocols at start of chat

• Greet participants

• Acknowledge mentions

• Keep tweets under 140 characters

Best Practices

• Shorten links (www.bitly.com)

o Test all your links before sending

• Include pictures/videos to increase engagement

• Include hashtags to help people follow the conversation

• Stay open to new formats

• Consider multimedia

• Take the chat beyond Twitter

#UWYKchat

Let’s practice!

Sample Tweets:

T1. Have you hosted/participated in a chat before? #UWYKchat

A1. Yes #UWYKchat

T2. Are you planning to host a chat next year? #UWYKchat

A2. Yes, we are planning to host a chat next week. #UWYKchat

Questions