By this time many of you are undoubtedly on Twitter. You may or may not have found the advantage of being on Twitter and if you're like me you might still be experimenting with this social media site to see what can be done with it. I might never figure out the absolute usefulness of Twitter, but for now I have some fun with it when I can. One interesting Twitter activity is the "chat".
A Twitter chat is something that can absolutely make your head spin as you're getting accustomed to it. Think of it as a bunch of people talking all at once and you have to keep track of as many conversations as you can and respond to the parts that pertain to you or interest you the most. In this scenario, instead of conversing aurally, the conversations are all written back and forth so that everything is in a combination of delayed time and thinking ahead to what you're going to type and send next. This is conversation that can really keep you on your toes and get you lost if you're not staying on top of it all.
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| TweetDeck (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
If you've never followed a Twitter chat I don't recommend doing it on your regular Twitter feed. I did that the first time and ended up all over the place unable to add anything of my own into the conversation. Then I started using Tweetdeck, a site for organizing your Twitter streams into manageable columns such as notifications and various hashtags which act as labels for an ongoing chat. There are a number of these social media dashboard sites that will manage what you want to see on the Twitter feeds. My recommendation is to do your own Google search to find the one that suits your needs the best.
Want to see what I'm alluding to in this post? I'm not going to go into the details of explaining how a chat works, but instead I recommend that you check one out for yourself. What better way than dropping in on one of the A to Z Challenge chats? These occur every Thursday at 1 PM and 8 PM Eastern Time. The hashtags you will look for are #AZChat and #AtoZChallenge.
You'll almost always see some sporadic activity with these hashtag labels, but things really break loose when the chat times come. This is the time to ask questions, share your blog links, and meet others in the A to Z community. And to keep the conversations going, the A to Z hosts will periodically put up their own questions as conversation prompts. There is never a dull moment during the A to Z Chats.
Try it this coming Thursday to see what it's all about. Grab a coffee, a glass of wine, your water bottle, or whatever you'd like and sit in to talk to the group about your A to Z thoughts. You can even just sit in and read if you'd prefer, but once you get into that rhythm of the chatter you will probably want to jump in with your own things to say.
It's great fun and it's informative too. Need blog or twitter followers? Start with an A to Z Chat so you can find like minded folks who you'll enjoy mingling with. After all, the community is one of the main benefits of A to Z. The A to Z chats are another way to enjoy that community a bit more.
Drop in this Thursday to see what I'm talking about. We'll be looking for you so be sure to at least say "hello".
Are you signed up on Twitter? If not, why not? Have you participated in a Twitter chat? If so tell us about the experience you had.
