Things I learned from my first twitter chat, A guide for the absolute beginner

Those who follow me on twitter might have noticed it. Last Thursday I joined my first twitter chat.

Twitter chats are great to meet new people and people in your niche to get so new and useful information. A lot of bloggers join them to network and make new friends.

Until last Thursday, I had never joined one because I wasn’t sure how twitter work in general and I felt like I didn’t know enough jet to join in. Twitter chats, however, are open for everyone so when I finally caught one at the right moment I thought; “why not”.

It turned out to be a lot less scary than I expected. The one I joined was The CBloggersChat for creative bloggers and it was a blast.

So I thought I woul share the things I learned and explain even the very basics because like I mentioned in my “one month in” post I am new to twitter.  I did not know the basics even those until recent and I would have loved a place where it was written out.

How it works.

Twitter chats are often hosted by one person or account. Said host decides on a topic and some questions. The topic is often announced beforehand. Some twitter chats don’t have a regular host, but let others host the chats in turns. For example Lunchtimebloggers were you can tweet them to host yourself.

Every twitter chat has their own hashtag. To follow the conversation you follow the hashtag on twitter in the section live. This way you see all the newest tweets in the conversation.

If you want to join a twitter chat you can easily search for one online;

Like in this list by blogambitions.com

And another calendar by Chloesocial.com

Things to remember when you join a twitter chat are to use the hashtag! I forgot that one a few time, but you really need it to be part of the conversation. Also when you answer there are two things to remember; To use the @ for the host so you reply to them and they know you did and not spam your followers and to use A1, A2, etc to show which question you are answering. (If it is more of a quite chat this might not be necessary

Everybody is welcome

Like I said before; most twitter chats will accept everyone to join in. Especially the one listed before. Only if you want to host one you need to sign up for that somewhere. Or host individually with your own hashtag for your followers. You’d probably want to announce that a little before the actual chat then of course so people can tune in.

Follow/like/respond and retweet.

This was one of the harder parts for me. As someone who is still very shy even online (which might be kind of weird for someone writing a blog), I find it hard to directly communicate on social media.

Unfortunately for me, a twitter chat is directly communicating online. Besides answering the host’s questions, it is also common practice to respond to each other. There was also a lot of liking and reblogging involved. In the end, everybody is there to support each other so it turned out absolutely fine.

There is no wrong answer

Another one where I was kind of scared about was actually giving my opinion or answer. There is not such a thing as a wrong answer in a twitter chat. (Of course staying nice and civil is a good idea anyway)

The worse that could happen is that someone reaches out to discuss our point of view and who knows, maybe you’ll learn something or change your mind.

I hope this helps some people and encourages you to join a twitter chat. If you want to read more about twitter chats How to rock you first twitter chat by chloesocial is an amazing post on this as well.

I had a lot more fun than I imagined in my first twitter chat. I just want to thank my good friend Romica for this post idea since she mentioned it after my tweet.

If you join a twitter chat let me know! I might see you there. If you just want to chat on twitter that is great too!