The terminology and the hashtag (the # symbol) confused us at first. But we absorbed a few tips, stumbled our way through it, and over the chats in the subsequent weeks we got the hang of it.
#Movechat will continue for the foreseeable future. In fact, we have become one of the moderators. As more and more movers embrace social media, it stands to reason that they will need a primer on how to participate in this manifestation of Twitter's abilities. Here it is:
- In order to participate in the chat fully, you need to do two things. First, all of your tweets must have the proper hashtag. Second, you need to see the other tweets coming in with the same hashtag. Fortunately, there are utilities which can help you do both at the same time. Our favourite is www.tweetchat.com. Sign in by authorizing access to your Twitter account, and specify the chat you wish to follow. You will see a stream of tweets with that tag on it, and the text box in which you type your message will invisibly attach the hashtag to everything you send out.
- Shortly before the session starts, inform your followers that you will be tweeting on a theme for the next hour. Include the hashtag in your tweet. Those who don't want to see those tweets can filter out anything with that hashtag.
- The chat session will consist of questions posed by the moderators, usually with a Q1, Q2, etc in front of it. Respond to the question by prefacing your answer with Q1 (or A1) to make it easier for others to connect the dots.
- You don't have to respond to every question. Chime in if you have something worth saying, but if you can't contribute to the discussion, there's nothing wrong with just lurking and absorbing what you see others say.
- When you agree with a comment, the common courtesy is to re-tweet it.
- If you want others to be able to re-tweet your comment, keep it below 110 characters (10 for the auto-hashtag, and 20 for the RT info).
- Finally, don't feed the trolls.
James, that's very helpful. Twitter seemed a strange language at first for me with all that confusing hashtags and replys...and even though I have been using it for a while, I'm still learning :)
ReplyDeleteGlad you found it useful! We've handed the baton of #movechat leadership to @jkmoving, but we still participate and it continues to be a valuable source of information and networking.
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