20 Useful Tips For Hosting a Great Twitter Chat

By Mark Tillison
Posted on March 23, 2017

Social Media Marketing Tips, Twitter Marketing Tips

Worried about not hosting a great Twitter Chat?

We’ve covered how to participate in a Twitter chat and listed over 500 Twitter chats in this huge Twitter chats list. In this post, generous Twitter chat participants share helpful tools, strategies and their top tips on hosting a great Twitter Chat, whether you’re starting out creating your own Twitter Chat or you’re already running one.

Tweeting goddess, PR and Marketing specialist Samantha Kelly has created and run a number of Twitter chats including #IrishBizParty, #BritishBizParty and #IrishHealthHour.

[Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/Tweetinggoddess]

Before you start a Twitter chat, create a Twitter account the same as the hashtag for example: #IrishHealthHour – create a Twitter account for @IrishHealthHour too.
Start by building momentum – follow those who you know will be interested in the theme of your chat.
Graphics get more attention. Create a graphic featuring the hashtag and the time of the Twitter chat.
Run the Twitter chat consistently at the same time every week. In time, regulars will expect it to be on – don’t let them down.
Reward participants by featuring a business or contributor of the week with some kind of prize. It doesn’t need to be a big prize – even a customised badge can be reward enough.
Avoid the temptation to directly message people to remind them. Direct messages are annoying unless they are urgent.

Manager of the Guildford Hub, which helps members network and grow their skills – Joanne McGowan, currently runs the popular #SurreyChat Twitter chat on Saturdays and Wednesdays.

[Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/guildfordhub]

When hosting a Twitter chat, always have a ‘Question of the Day’ (QOTD) up your sleeve. The can drive the hour if the interaction is slow.
Publicise the hour frequently across Twitter at varying times and send out reminders to those who have shown an interest or participated in the past.
Try to establish a culture early on that it is a live hour. Discourage automated tweets and encourage as much interaction as possible to make it a success.

Micro business specialist and founder of ‘Your Business Hub – Emma Selby, has run a number of different Twitter chats.

[Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/EmmaJSelby]

Keyhole is a fun app that tells you who was the most active tweeter and how many tweets in total are using your hashtag.
Have an engaging QOTD. Keep repeating and directing people to it to encourage conversation.
Have a guide to Twitter chats for newbies ready to share to help those new to chats to understand how to get the most from them and to avoid bad habits.
Have a few interesting links ready before you begin and schedule some resource style posts to go out throughout the chat so that you can focus on chatting and responding.
Always schedule the “hello and welcome” and the “goodbye” tweets so you don’t get caught out!
When you begin, start with a crowd of like-minded individuals primed to be there and support you each week until your Twitter chat gets off the ground and builds momentum.

Host of popular Twitter chat, #DigiBlogChat, Carol Stephen recommends a few tools to help:

[Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/Carol_Stephen]

You can get a free “slice” of your chat using TweetReach. $20 gives you way more analytics.
TweetChat and Twubs are great tools for managing your Twitter chat.
Prepare 8-9 questions for each chat that scheduled evenly through the chat to encourage engagement and keep the chat moving along.
Use an app like Storify to prolong the life of each chat.
Create a column using Hootsuite or TweetChat to monitor your Twitter Chat hashtag between events.