There are many opportunities to see hashtags in action! There are also more and more opportunities emerging for people to coordinate global conversations that happen at the same time, instead of disconnected over time (still tied together via hashtag). I am part of the planning team working on the monthly chat series behind #4Change. There is also a Twitter-based chat starting up for consultants who work with social benefit organizations.

I wanted to share some of the lessons I’ve learned from my involvement with organizing Twitter chats. I’m looking forward to your ideas, too!

1. Build a landing pad

It is helpful to have some place where you can send people interested in your topic or chat that haven’t participated before – whether it’s a website, a blog, or just a separate Twitter account.  If you have a landing pad somewhere online where you can refer people and provide information about your chats, your group, or your purpose in more than 140 characters, it will save you a lot of extra tweeting!  Plus, it will provide a natural and obviously place to aggregate your content, thoughts, updates, and promotion of the chats.

2. Brainstorm lots of questions but pick a few

It seems obvious that people using a communication tool like Twitter, and then electing to participate in a large-scale public chat would not require much prodding to keep conversation going.  But, it is actually just this reason that it’s more important to pre-select your questions.  Twitter chats are slower moving than you’d expect because everyone is waiting on the Twitter search to refresh with new posts.  It works best to have 3-5 questions selected ahead of time and shared with a core group of chat leaders or guides.  This way, there is a group of people helping keep the conversation on track, focused on one question at a time.  Otherwise, the group can quickly and easily splinter off to other topics using other hashtags, after all, that’s what Twitter enables all day, every day.

3. Consider your time

If you really want to pull in participants from all over the world, it’s important to consider what time you are holding the chat.  It’s also important to consider how long you want the chat to be.  Knowing that Twitter based chats are slower in development and pace than something like a live web chat, you don’t want it to be too narrow of a window, but you can only hold people’s attention for so long as well.

4. Narrow your focus

#4Change or #NPCons (nonprofit consultants) seem like pretty obvious topics. But coordinating a conversation would be far too difficult without a specific topic for that chat because the possibilities for questions or specific ideas within those two general topics are endless.  For example, recent 4Change topics have included using competitions for social change and Twitter as a political/revolutionary tool.  This also means people can identify ahead of time any resources they want to share during the chat and if they are interested in the specific topic of the month or not.

5. Invite your audience

If you have your topic for the month picked out, you may have some experts, prominent thinkers, or maybe organizations/companies/ groups that are known for working in or with that topic that you want to explicitly invite to participate.  Ensuring that fresh voices participate is important – we could all talk to the same group of people without organizing a public conversation.  Promoting the chat widely via Twitter and other social networks is a great way to find more participants, too.

6. Never underestimate the technology

I already mentioned that Twitter-based chats aren’t as fast-paced as live web chats or some other technologies.  But, you also have to remember that Twitter isn’t in your control!  If the server has a glitch, if there’s scheduled maintenance, or if search tools lag, then your Twitter chat will dramatically suffer.  This happened during the July #4Change chat and caused us to call the chat off half-way through as search was 15 minutes behind and many participants’ messages weren’t showing up at all.

7. Participate!

#4Change:
If you want to learn more about the #4Change monthly chat series, visit http://4change.memeshift.com  The next chat topic will be announced there and on Twitter using #4Change.

#NPCons:
Join the first #NPCons chat this coming Tuesday, July 21, at 4pm ET/1pm PT. These chats will be monthly, on the 3rd Tuesdays, at 1 pm Pacific.

The post Using Twitter for a global conversation appeared first on Socialbrite.

So, to answer that call, the #4Change crew has started building the compendium and now it’s your turn to chip in! Here’s the link to see what we have so far.

Please contribute to the Competitions for Change Compendium!  Simply click here to add to the resource!

The post Creating a compendium of Competitions for Change appeared first on Socialbrite.

Details:

• Date: Thursday, June 11
• Where: Twitter (search for #4Change)
• When: 5 – 7 pm US Eastern Time
• Topic: How can challenges/competitions be used to discover, support, and accelerate social change projects and solutions?

Why are we doing this and why would you want to join? Great questions:

Social media is becoming a key driver of social change, allowing for the dissemination of new ideas, the formation of new communities and coalitions and the realization of new efficiencies and reach by existing social change groups. Throughout the world activists, organizers and non-profit professionals are exploring how best to use these tools, and sharing the results using the tools themselves. However these conversations are less international and therefore less effective than they could be.

We have so much to learn from each other. From new forms of political campaigning in the United States, experiments in e-government and civic participation in England, from the fight against internet censorship in Australia and New Zealand and from start-ups in Canada and France. And beyond.

We need a platform for lightweight, easily-organized and openly accessible conversations involving people from numerous countries. Twitter, I believe, provides us with such a platform.  –#4Change

When do the chats take place?

Chats are on the second Thursday of each month between 5-7pm US Eastern Time (GMT-4).

Who is leading and participating in these chats?

#4Change was initially proposed by Tom Dawkins (@tomjd) in Washington DC who is joined by Todd Pitt (@zerostrategist – Washington DC), Morgan Sully (@memeshfit – Oakland, California), Natasha Judd (@tashjudd – London, England), Edward Harran (@edwardharran – Brisbane, Australia) and Vibewire (@vibewire – Sydney, Australia). –#4Change

But the #4Change chats are open to everyone interested in discussing social media’s role in social change! Don’t be shy about joining—that’s one great thing about an open, public chat like this, you can follow along silently until you have something you want to say and no one will know

How can you follow along or join the conversation?

1. If you want to contribute to the conversation, you’ll need to have a twitter account (it’s free).
2. To follow the conversation (whether you are planning to contribute or not), use http://search.twitter.com or another application to search on Twitter for “#4Change”
3. Jump in to the conversation by adding “#4Change” (without the “”) to one of your Twitter messages

Are there any rules for #Change Chats?

1. #4Change will be structured around a series of questions which all participants can respond to. Send your questions to @tomjd without the hash tag (to keep them out of the stream) to have them considered.
2. Introduce yourself in 1 tweet at the start or when you join.
3. Stay on topic!
4. Stay cool.

Join me for the chat this Thursday – looking forward to discussing the role competitions play in social change!

Originally posted at amysampleward.org

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