Twitter Chat #sbbuzz
Last night I participated (a bit) in my first Tweet Chat. What’s a tweet chat? A group of people (Twitterers) decide to “meet” at a set time and use a hashtag (such as #sbbuzz) to connect. And chat.
What is #sbbuzz all about? First of all, that # sign in the front means it is a hashtag. You will see hashtags all over Twitter. Hashtags are a sign that this may be a topic of interest to others in the general Twittersphere. Anyone can create a hashtag. #sbbuzz stands for Small Business Buzz (and that link will take you to the sbbuzz blog). You can also follow sbbuzz on Twitter. #sbbuzz chats are held every Tuesday night, 8pm–10pm EST (I think that should be EDT now, but it says EST on the blog).
How did I find out about the Tweet Chat? Much thanks to NJinsuranceGirl for tweeting about #sbbuzz. I found NJinsuranceGirl (Kacy Campion Renna) because jerseybites recommended her on Friday for #followfriday (what’s #followfriday? That’s a whole ‘nother topic: go on Twitter on any Friday and you’ll see lots of these #followfriday tags that are suggesting people to follow on Twitter). I met jerseybites in person last February when I attended a TweetUp. Last night, when I was nowhere near my computer, NJinsuranceGirl sent me the following helpful link via Twitter: http://sbbuzz.biz/instructions. I got on late (at about 8:50 pm EDT, and they had started at 8 pm), and I spent the first ten minutes reading those instructions and trying to figure out the best way to access it all.
What was discussed at the #sbbuzz chat? The topic this week was Insiders Tips for Small Businesses on Twitter. sbbuzz tweeted these questions during the course of the two hour chat:
- Q1. What advice would you give a small business owner brand new to Twitter?
- Q2. What should businesses talk about? What are businesses doing on Twitter?
- Q3. Any good resources for Twitter how-tos, reference guides, etiquettes, etc?
- Q4. Is your local community (govt/academic/private) doing anything to promote entrepreneurship/small business? What is working?
- Q5. How do you find time to stay involved, engaged and contributing to online and offline networks?
- Q6. How many social media networks do you actively participate in? Do connections overlap? How do you keep track?
There was more, but you get the basic idea. I felt since I was new to the “party,” I mostly read what others had to say (and I picked a few to follow regularly), but I did tweet this in response to Q6: “Q6 Social Media networks: Twitter, my own blog, Facebook – I’m on LinkedIn, too; much overlap because of my own blog. #sbbuzz”
Want to know what people had to say? For a while, this will be available by going to http://search.twitter.com/ and typing #sbbuzz. But if you are looking at this post on May 27 or later, you will see the #sbbuzz for that week. A summary is now posted at http://sbbuzz.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/small-biz-tech-advice-resources-may-19-2009/.
Have you ever participated in a Tweet Chat? Used a hashtag in Twitter to follow a topic with others? How would you answer any of the above questions? What questions would you ask?
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When you hear about networking, what comes to mind? At first, I thought of planting a seed for a tree and watching the tree slowly grow. But I don’t care for that analogy, because when you plant seeds for say, an apple tree, it may grow slowly, but in the end you get: apples. When you plant networking seeds, you might get apples or oranges or watermelon or rotten tomatoes. Or all of the above. So maybe magical seeds with unknown results?