We’ve learned from others who host these kinds of events regularly and have collected the following tips to help make the experience a good one.

Before the #ChairChat

1. Inform your twitter followers that you will be participating in a Tweet Chat before the #ChairChat begins and that you’ll be tweeting a lot for the next hour. It is also helpful to invite them to attend.  Here’s an example: “For the next hour I’ll be chatting about (insert chat topic) on #ChairChat with others in the Academic Leadership Community. Join us! (insert details – date/time here)”. 
2. If your tweets post to your Facebook, you may want to disable the application before the chat so that your tweets do not overwhelm your follower’s newsfeed. If you choose not to disable this application, please begin every response/comment with “@response” and it will not post to your Facebook.
3. Learn the tools and Twitter Chat platform before #ChairChat starts.

During the #ChairChat

1. Join our #ChairChat as soon as you feel comfortable. We are here to learn and grow from one another, so please say hi so we can welcome you to the discussion.
2. Feel free to connect with our tweet chat moderator before or after the chat if you have questions. The tweet chat moderator will introduce themselves at the beginning of the chat and will be responsible for welcoming new chat members, keeping the discussion focused, and summarizing key points of the discussion.
3. Don’t try to read every single tweet within the chat. Tweets can often flow by fast so just skim them as things go by and respond to those that peak your interest.
4. Don’t worry at all about spelling or punctuation.
5. Everything you write during the chat will go to ALL your Twitter followers (whether they participate in the chat or not) unless you send a direct message to someone.
6. Stay on topic as best as you can. If there is another topic you would like to delve deeper into, please email Kathy at Kathy@CompanyofExperts.net with the topic of interest and we will work to add it to our #ChairChat schedule.
7. It is NOT vital you answer all questions.
8. Listen. Reading the tweets of others and considering them is ‘listening’.
9. When typing a tweet, try to keep thoughts as complete as you can so followers outside the chat can learn from you.
10. Re-tweeting the posts of another user in the chat is a common way to support statements from other tweeter and share them with your own network.
11. It is acceptable to send a private tweet (direct message) to someone, but try to do it outside of the hashtag so that it doesn’t end up in the chat’s archive.
12. The #ChairChat is not a tweet chat stream to market your own products or services.
13. Remember to add “#ChairChat” to the end of each tweet unless you are using “TweetChat” for TweetChat will insert it into your tweet automatically.

After the #ChairChat

1. Take time to review the conversation and questions after the #ChairChat has concluded. You can reap the greatest benefit of participation in tweet chats with the conversation you have between the scheduled #ChairChat.
2. Feel free to share tweets from within the chat with your network (i.e. re-tweeting or commenting on the subject), but don’t forget to include #ChairChat so that your followers can follow along.

Each session is captured & posted on this website shortly after each session so you can come scan to review anytime