You’re familiar with the setting. It takes place at business conventions, industry conferences and even reunions. Hors de oeuvres’ and free drinks decorate a large ball room while attendees congregate in their circle of acquaintances and, before you know it, there are a million different conversations taking place. Business cards make their way from hand to hand with a potential email, phone call or meeting to follow up in a more personal (and quiet) setting.
Take this scene and digitalize it via the World Wide Web and you get Twitter. There are literally millions of conversations taking place among tweeters of all types and they congregate around their own “circle of acquaintances” determined by whom they follow and who follows them. Business website links and contact information make their way from post to post with a potential follow up in an email, phone call or… tweet chat, a Twitter-based, online chat room.
These virtual chat rooms use hash tags (for example, #tweetchat) to keep track of all posts about a specific subject matter. With hordes of information being exchanged in social media, it’s great to be able to put on some blinders to the Twitter-sphere and focus on one topic with people who are concentrating on/interested in the same thing. Plus, you never have to worry about that one person in every meeting who is long-winded and takes up too much time because a) you’re not actually speaking and b)you only have 140 characters to use each time you make a post. And, to make things as simple as possible, Tweet Chat employs user friendly features like smart-pausing, real- time updates and automatic hash tags. The process takes three easy steps.
1. Navigate to www.tweetchat.com.
2. Sign in with your Twitter credentials at the designated time.
3. Type in the hash tag of your choice and follow the live stream of conversation.
Most tweet chats take place at a designated time and are moderated by a lead tweeter who sends out questions for discussion and keeps track of time. For example, one of my favorite tweet chats, AgChat, whose mission is to “empower farmers and ranchers to connect communities through social media platforms” takes place every Tuesday evening from 8 -10 pm ET. The first 15 minutes is reserved for networking where all chatters introduce themselves by real names, rather than Twitter handles, and get settled next to their computers with a snack (and maybe a glass of wine.) Following the intros are questions about the topic of the week that have been submitted to the moderator in advance. The last five minutes of the conversation are reserved for “pitching” where participants can promote their blogs, websites or businesses. With topics like food and health, family-run businesses, agricultural organizations and sustainability, Agchat is definitely appropriate for growers, shippers, packers, and fresh produce lovers alike.
A few other tweet chats we have discovered are
• #foodchat – in conjunction with #agchat, every 3rd Tuesday from 8-10pm EDT
• #smchat – on social media, every Wednesday from 12-1 pm CST
• #blogchat – on blogging, every Sunday from 8-9 pm CST
For a list of other tweet chats to join, take a look at this central public Google Document.
JOIN US on Thursday, August 26th, at 1 PM Central time for #freshproducechat! Direct message @TheCoreBlog with your questions or topics you would like to discuss.
So What?: Tweet Chat is an easy-to-use tool that allows participants to meet in a Twitter-based, online chat room and have a moderated discussion about one area of interest. This kind of resource is a perfect way for the fresh produce industry to highlight current issues and stay connected with each other, as well as with consumers.
Posted by: Kelly Pritchett, The Visualizer
