How to Engage Your Audience Using a Tweet Chat with Ashley Jacobs
Asley Jacobs works for Wisebread.com, a very popular finance blog that covers frugal living, investing, retirement and insurance. For the last 3 yrs she has been in charge of the tweet chats.
Twitter is our #1 social network for promoting content and attracting new leads to our site. If you aren’t yet familiar with Twitter, it’s a platform you should really get proficient on.
Listen now and you’ll hear Ashley and I talk about:
- (03:45) Introduction
- (05:00) What is tweet chat?
- (07:30) Why should someone host a tweet chat?
- (09:20) How should you plan & coordinate your own chat?
- (13:50) What are the top 3 benefits of hosting a tweet chat?
- (16:30) How do you choose a hashtag for a tweet chat?
- (20:50) What are your best do’s and dont’s for hosting a chat?
Resources Mentioned
Transcript
Trent: Hey there, bright idea hunters. Welcome to The Groove Digital Marketing Podcast episode number 13. I am your host, Trent Dyrsmid. This is the podcast where we help marketing executives discover ways to use digital marketing and marketing automation to dramatically increase revenue. If you’re a marketing executive and you’re looking for proven tactics and strategies to help you increase traffic to your site, to increase conversions, and, ultimately to increase revenue, well, you’re in the right place.
The way that we do that is I bring proven experts onto the show, and I interview them. I get them to share with us the results they achieved. Then, we do a reverse engineer and I get them to explain to me exactly how they achieved those results. So, if you’re the type of person who likes to model the success of other people, would love to have the opportunity to look over someone’s shoulder and see exactly how to do a certain thing or to achieve a certain result, that is what this podcast is for.
On the show with me today is a woman by the name of Ashley Jacobs. For the last three years, Ashley has been in charge of, among other things, the tweet chats for a very popular personal finance blog by the name of Wise Bread.
In this episode we’re going to talk in detail about what a tweet chat is, why you should host one, how you should plan and coordinate your own, how you can find tweet chats to participate in, some of the benefits of tweet chats, and a few of the other logistical details of being able to gain proficiency in this area.
Twitter, I will tell you, is my number one social network in terms of promoting my content and attracting new traffic and leads to my site. If you’re not yet super familiar with Twitter, it’s a platform that you really want to become proficient with. Tweet chats, there are many, many, many organizations that are using them with great success. Stay tuned. In this episode, you’re going to learn how to do exactly that.
Before we get into all that, I just want to draw your attention to a free resource that we have for you. If you’d like to learn more about all aspects of inbound marketing, go to groovedigitalmarketing.com/resources where you’ll find a page that is filled with our ever-growing library of marketing eBooks. If you’re looking for a detailed guide to give you insight on some aspect of inbound marketing, just head on over to groovedigitalmarketing.com/resources. Everything that is there is absolutely free.
With that said, please join me in welcoming Ashley to the show. Hey, Ashley, welcome to the show.
Ashley: Thank you so much for having me, Trent. I’m really excited to be here.
Trent: Yeah, no problem. I’m pretty thrilled to have you here as well because I have never yet done an interview to talk about a tweet chat. I found you online. I don’t even remember where. Maybe you remember. Because I know I contacted you after reading the article, but that escapes me just for the moment.
Ashley: Yeah. You actually contacted me through Twitter.
Trent: Absolutely. You know, a lot of people ask me, “Trent, how do you get all these guests on your show?”
I say, “Well, I just send them a tweet most often.”
Trent: For the folks who don’t have any idea yet who you are, before we dive into everything that we’re going to talk about-all things Twitter chats-maybe just take a moment and introduce yourself to my audience with who you are and what you do.
Ashley: Of course. Like you said, my name is Ashley Jacobs. I work for a personal finance blog called Wise Bread. We’re basically a frugal living blog. We teach people how to save money on anything and everything that they end up spending on in their day-to-day lives. We cover various personal finance topics on top of that such as investing, retirement, and insurance. You name it, we cover it.
What I do for Wise Bread, my primary thing that I do is tweet chats. That’s kind of my bread and butter. I do a lot of marketing for them and some sales, but I’ve been running their tweet chats for about three years now. They’re my favorite part of my job. I constantly tell my boss, “Do not take those chats away from me if you assign me new tasks to do for Wise Bread, because I love doing them and if you take them away I will quit and I will be very disappointed.” Yeah, the tweet chats are kind of what I’m known for.
Trent: All right. Folks, listen up, because you’ve got a tweet chat expert on the podcast here. Anyone who’s been doing one thing for three years obviously knows what the heck they’re doing.
With that said, for those people who maybe aren’t familiar with a tweet chat, let’s start there. What is a tweet chat?
Ashley: Yeah. Basically, a tweet chat is a live chat on Twitter where people can discuss certain topics in real time. They typically utilize a particular hashtag so that people can keep track of the discussion. And, they’re just kind of a way for brands, or blogs, or journalists, or major companies, and consumers to kind of come together to discuss and learn about various topics.
Trent: All right. Are they particularly good for engagement? Are they particularly good for audience building? Is there any one area where you think they’re a little bit better than others?
Ashley: Engagement definitely. I mean, they’re a great way for companies or blogs to reach out to their readers, or consumers, or customers, or clients and kind of have that one-on-one interaction in real time with them. Yeah, they’re fantastic for engagement.
A lot of social media, it’s like you post something. Then, it’s in real time, but it’s not like you’re getting instant, back and forth interaction. Whereas with a tweet chat people know that you’re going to be on and know that you’re going to be chatting with them. It increases the ability to engage, like I said, with your clients and readers in real time.
Trent: Okay. Why should someone host a tweet chat? Like, for example, with Wise Bread, are there certain objectives that you’re trying to accomplish when you host your tweet chats?
Ashley: Yeah. Our primary objective with our chats at Wise Bread is to help educate people on various financial topics. This week, we have a chat coming up with Experian on credit tips for new graduates. We’ve done chats on things like how to save on your food bill, how to save on gas, is it better buy or lease a home. On our end it’s more of a way to help educate people and increase their knowledge level on different topics.
Doing that, it kind of establishes whoever the host is as an expert in a particular field. Because if you’re hosting these chats, and you’re sharing knowledge, and engaging, and giving people new insights, and tips, and tricks, and advice that they may not have already known about, it definitely establishes you as a go-to Twitter handle, or site, or company for people to get educated and increase their knowledge base.
Another benefit, like I said, it also gives you a way to interact with your readers and customers and build more personal relationships with them. For example, say I’m trying to decide whether or not to shop at Kohl’s or shop at Target, and I just participated in a tweet chat with Target. I’m probably going to be more inclined to shop at Target, because I’ve kind of developed some sort of a relationship with their social media channels and have that more personal one-on-one relationship with them as opposed to a business that I’ve never had that interaction with.
Trent: Yeah, that makes sense.
Ashley: It also enables you to build relationships with other companies, or bloggers, or journalists through cross promotion which is really important, I feel like, in today’s world-having that cross promotion and having other companies, and brands, and blogs, and journalists know who you are to get the word out about you.
Trent: That actually is a great segue to the next theme of this interview. I want to talk for people who’ve never done this before. Let’s go through the steps that you would need to coordinate your own successful tweet chat. Let me put a couple of questions up so you’ve got context for the answer.
Trent: If you don’t have a big following, is that a problem? What should you do to prepare? Who do you invite, and how do you invite them? Talk about creating a hashtag. That’s probably enough to keep you talking for a while, so let’s go with that.
Ashley: Yeah, of course. If you don’t have a big following, probably the best thing you can do to get started is attend other people’s tweet chats to get yourself out there and start engaging with people who do enjoy going to chats and do enjoy having the ability to get that knowledge that they’re looking for in real time.
To find these other chats, there are a few different ways that you can go about doing that. One of the easy ways, something that I do for everything in my life that I have a question about, is Google it. Get on Google. Search for chats in your area of interest. That tends to be a good way to find chats that are going to help you find your target audience.
Another thing that you can do is once you’ve found a chat that you like you can follow people who attended that chat because frequently people who attend one chat tend to go to a lot of different chats. That’s another way that you can find other chats to help build your audience up.
Then, another thing you can do is check the United States trends list on Twitter. Frequently, you’ll find hashtags on there that correlate with different chats. That’s just another way to discover new chats and start participating to increase the amount of followers that you have and increase the potential engagement if you do decide to run your own chat.
Another thing you can do if you don’t have a lot of Twitter followers and you do want to start your own chat is consider offering prizes. Offering prizes is a great way to get people excited and get them to come to your chats.
At Wise Bread we offer at least two $10 Amazon gift cards every week to our chatters. That definitely increases the number of participants that we get. If we ever have sponsored chats we end up offering upwards of $300 in gift card prizes just to increase the number of participants. Those are some strategies that you can use to get people to come to your chat and make them aware of it.
Trent: If you’re going to host your own, do you need special software to do this?
Ashley: No. Actually, there are quite a few tools online that you can use to track the chat. The one that I tend to use the most is tchat.io. Basically, what you do for that is you just go to the site. You enter the hashtag for the chat. Typically, each chat has its own hashtag to help you keep track of the conversation.
A service like tchat.io will help you monitor that hashtag by inputting the hashtag into the system and then creating, like, a live stream of users who are talking using that hashtag.
I know other blogs and chats use I think it’s called Twubs. There’s another one. It’s called tweetchat.com. There are various tools out there that can help you see the whole discussion of that particular hashtag in real time.
Trent: Okay. Have you guys ever published any blog posts that we should be linking to on how to plan or how to run your own Twitter chat?
Ashley: That’s a good question. We actually have not. I’ve done interviews on it. I’ve spoken at a couple of FinCon events on how to run a tweet chat. But, we’ve never actually posted anything about how to run your own tweet chat, just because the majority of our audience that reads Wise Bread are mostly consumers, like stay at home moms or people who are looking for information on retirement or personal finance topics. They’re not necessarily the type of people who are looking for information on how to run their own chat. Sadly, we don’t have anything quite like that on our site.
Trent: Well, that’s what Google’s for, folks…
Trent: I’ve been Googling as Ashley’s been talking, and there is, as you might guess, no lack of blog posts explaining in detail how to do this stuff.
Trent: All right. Next one on my list is what are the top three benefits, in your experience, of hosting a Twitter chat, or a tweet chat, I guess I should call it?
Ashley: Yeah. I’d say the top three benefits of hosting… I think I kind of touched on this a little bit, but establishing yourself as an expert in a particular field. If you’re running weekly chats on a personal finance topics, or whatever your area of expertise is, and you become that go to Twitter handle to find the information that people are looking for, and you’re hosting chats on those topics, you end up becoming people’s expert that they tend to go to when they are looking for information on a particular subject.
It helps set you apart from the rest of the field, so to speak, in regards to being that site that people can go to for information. Because you’re interacting with them in real time, and you’re developing that relationship, and establishing yourself as an expert in that way.
Again, having the opportunity to interact with your readers and customers and build more personal relationships with them. It’s just another benefit. There are so many big companies out there that aren’t necessarily responding to their customers in real time. It’s almost like talking to a logo if you try to get a response from a major company.
If you’re a big company and you’re looking for ways to engage with and develop those more personal relationships with your clients or your customers, this is a good way to do it. Because you’re actually taking the time to set aside an hour of your week and talk to them and just have that interaction that they might not normally get with other companies.
Again, the third one is it allows you to also build relationships with other companies, and bloggers, and journalists just to get your brand out there more. It’s basically just a tool to help brand yourself.
Trent: Okay. I went to tchat.io. I just typed in the #inboundmarketing and hit the start chatting button. I have no idea. Obviously, people are using that particular hashtag all the time.
Trent: All day every day. That isn’t necessarily a tweet chat by the definition that we’re talking about.
Ashley: Basically, and I guess I’ll segue into what goes into choosing a hashtag for a chat, there are a few things that you should keep in mind if you’re thinking about starting your own chat.
The first thing is you’re going to want to make your hashtag original. Don’t use a hashtag that tons of other people are using just for general commentary. For example, inbound marketing. Or, let’s say if you’re hosting a money chat you should probably stay away from using just #money or #finance because there are going to be so many other people who are using those hashtags just for random conversation or article promotion, and it’s not necessarily a hashtag that’s going to differentiate you from the rest of the conversation.
Another thing to keep in mind is when you’re choosing a hashtag you’re probably going to want to choose one hashtag and stick with it through all your chats. That way people know exactly which hashtag to look for if they’re looking for your chat. If you’re constantly changing up your hashtag people are going to have no idea how to find you from week to week, or if you’re doing it every two weeks every two weeks or so.
It’s important to pick one hashtag and stay consistent with it. For example, if you’re going to be hosting a chat on topics that revolve around technology, something like #techchat may be a good option. I know Experian hosts a weekly chat. They’re a credit company. Their weekly chat hashtag that you can always find them under is #creditchat.
Or, if you want to make it more about your brand as opposed to the topic that you plan on talking about, you can choose a hashtag that will represent your brand. For example, Wise Bread uses #wbchat which is just a shortened version of Wise Bread chat. There’s another site out there called Money Crashers. They do a weekly chat, and they use #mcchat which is shortened for Money Crashers chat. Those are the things to keep in mind when you’re choosing a hashtag and using hashtags to help people track your chats.
Trent: So, most important thing, make sure nobody else is using that hashtag.
Trent: Okay. I was typing in “bi” for bright ideas, #Bichat. Sadly, I can’t use that one.
Trent: Somebody else is already using that on their thread, so I’ll have to come up with something more original.
Trent: Okay. One of the things that I wanted to go back to was how to find these Twitter chats. Because that was something else I typed in while you were talking. I was trying to find Twitter chats. Of course, I’m trying to multi-task, so maybe that’s not the best way to do it. I wasn’t really having any luck.
Are you saying to just go to Google and type in? Like, let’s say that I wanted to find a chat about inbound marketing. Are you saying just type the phrase “inbound marketing tweet chat?”
Ashley: Yeah. You could try doing that. Inbound marketing is definitely a little bit more specific. You may even want to look for just basic marketing chats just to broaden the horizons.
If you can’t find a chat out there that you’re looking for, that’s probably a great opportunity for you to fill a need in the space that hasn’t already been filled and start a chat on it. But, yeah, using Google to just find chats that you’re interested in, I mean if you Google “finance chats” you’ll be able to easily find finance chats that come up. Marketing chats, same thing. I know that there are a few different websites that… I believe they have calendars of…
Ashley: …when certain chats are happening and when you can find them. I believe tweetchat.com is one of those that have a long list of chats that are out there. Definitely check that out and see if there’s anything on their calendar that is of interest to you.
Trent: Okay, terrific. Yeah, that clears it up. I guess just the first search that I did was a little too vague. But, as soon as I took the inbound out and did marketing I found calendars and all sorts of things.
Trent: As with anything, it comes down to the search phrase that you’re using.
Trent: Okay. Ashley, obviously, with Google, the details that anyone needs to make one of these things happen is readily available to anyone who wants to do a little bit of homework. Before we sign off, is there anything that we haven’t talked about that with your three years of experience you would say, “Hey don’t do this or make sure you do this?”
Ashley: Yeah, absolutely. I guess the first thing on my list would be definitely make sure to have fun. These are supposed to be fun. They’re supposed to be interactive. If you’re running a chat and you’re not having a good time with it you’re doing something wrong.
So many of our chats, we’re talking about a certain subject, but we’ll totally get off topic sometimes. We actually run our chats at noon Pacific Time so all of our west coast chatters are on their lunch breaks and whatnot. They’ll start randomly talking about what they’re having for lunch or how hungry they are. Be willing to go where the direction of the chat is taking you. Have fun with it and interact with people.
Ashley: Another thing to keep in mind is obviously your chat is important for your branding. But, you don’t want to come across as someone who’s just in it to overly promote themselves and put themselves out there. A good way to avoid coming across as super self-absorbed is to find other articles, or other company recommendations, or just whatever it is that you can share from other sites, or other journalists, or bloggers, or companies within the chat to help do some cross promotion and promote other people-as opposed to simply promoting yourself and coming off as super spammy. Being super spammy is not good. Definitely try to avoid that.
Another thing to try to do is if you are planning on doing a chat, try to make it at a time where it’s convenient for people to attend. Think about your audience. Think about when they’re going to be available to be on Twitter and participate in your chat.
For example, say that you’re looking to run a chat where your target audience is single moms. You’re probably not going to want to schedule it for dinner hours when they’re trying to get dinner on the table. It’s probably better to schedule for times that the kids are in school. Those are just a few things to keep in mind in regards to dos and don’ts.
Trent: All right. Ashley, if people want to be able to reach out to you, I imagine Twitter is a pretty good way to do that.
Trent: What’s your Twitter handle?
Ashley: Our Twitter handle is @wisebread.
Trent: Okay. Ashley, thank you so much for making some time to come here on the show and enlighten the audience and me on what a Twitter chat is and why we might want to consider using one. It’s been a pleasure to have you with us.
Ashley: Well, thank you so much, Trent. I really appreciate you having me on. This has been wonderful.
Trent: No problem at all. Take care.
Trent: All right. To get to the show notes for this episode, go to groovedigitalmarketing.com/13. If you enjoyed this episode and want to help me spread the word, thank you very much for that. Just go to groovedigitalmarketing.com/love.
That’s it for this episode. I am your host, Trent Dyrsmid. Thank you so very much for tuning in. I look forward to having you back for another episode soon. Until then, take care and have a wonderful day. Bye-bye.
Trent Dyrsmid writes at BrightIdeas.co, where he shares proven marketing strategies you can use to attract more traffic, increase conversions, and maximize profits. For bright ideas on how leverage content marketing and marketing automation, join his free newsletter.
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