Did you know there are 400 million tweets generated every day and 50% of all Americans see, read or hear about a tweet daily? As you can Twitter has become a very popular and powerful social medium and can become a great marketing tool for a business. It can be used for customer service, public relations and a quick way to share key knowledge.
Another way your business can utilize Twitter is by holding a Twitter chat. By definition a Twitter chat is simply an interactive conversation ran on Twitter, held at a specific time on a specific topic.
To host a Twitter chat, you simply need a Twitter handle (eg. @bigcouchmedia), a hashtag, which is simply a dedicated hyperlinked keyword with the "#" in front of it (eg. #bigcouchmedia) and a pre-determined date and time. Aside from the time invested in planning and promoting them, Twitter chats are free on Twitter to do.
Twitter chats are a great way to have an organized conversation between a business and consumers on Twitter. They can be a great way to engage with customers and ask about their needs and wants and to announce a new product or service your company maybe offering.
For example, Apple may use the hashtag #iphone in a 30 minute Twitter chat to discuss with the Twitter community about new features on their newest smartphone and a way to have an open, transparent forum to discuss customer concerns and wants.
Twitter chats can be very affective in building brand loyalty on your products or services but they need to be marketed ahead of time on other mediums such as in email blasts and on other social media channels. A spur of the moment Twitter chat probably won't get the biggest following.