If you haven’t heard, @ChrisBrogan has agreed to co-host #blogchat tonite! We’ll be discussing how to use other social media sites in order to improve and grow your blog. I think Chris probably does this better than anyone, so I am thrilled that he’s agreed to share what he’s learned with us.
Now if you are a regular of #blogchat, you know how batshit-insanely fast the chat can get. It can be danged tough to keep up with, even if you are a veteran. Add in Chris co-hosting and bringing his 150K followers, and it could be a recipe for complete chaos. Hopefully in a good way 😉
So in an attempt to make sure that everyone has a grand time, I wanted to try to have a little more background and structure to tomorrow’s chat. As #blogchat regulars can tell you, #blogchat is pretty much a freeform discussion, and that’s honestly the biggest reason why #blogchat is the most popular chat on Twitter. But if the volume picks up like I think it will, the ‘freeform’ flow could be too much for some (especially those that are new to #blogchat), unless we have a bit more organization in place.
With that in mind, keep the following in mind:
1 – The topic is How to Use Other Social Sites/Presences to Grow Your Blog. Please try to keep your tweets on this topic.
2 – For the 1st 30 mins of the chat, we’ll discuss this particular question: “How do you decide which sites you should be active on in order to help your blog?” I’m not talking about ‘Is Twitter better than Facebook?”, but rather we will be talking about your strategy for growing your blog, and what you are trying to accomplish. In other words, we won’t be talking about specific tools so much, but rather what do you look for from the sites in order to see if they would be a good fit for what you are trying to accomplish with your blog? Chris will walk us through his thinking here, and help us figure out which sites will work best to support our blogging strategies. This area of the discussion will carry us through about 8:30 or so.
3 – At around 8:30, we’ll start talking about how to decide if one of the social sites you have a presence on should just be an ‘outpost’ for you. Chris has written before about this, here and here. Please take a few minutes to read these posts to familiarize yourself with the idea.
Now if you have some blog questions that are NOT related to this week’s topic, I would ask you to please join #blogchat after 9pm Central. Chris can likely only stay till around 9pm Central, and we want to make sure that we give as many people as possible a chance to connect with him. Besides, if you have a question about the best WordPress theme, for example, if you ask it at 8:15, it will just get lost in the sea of #blogchat tweets anyway. So please, as a courtesy to your fellow #blogchatters, please wait and join us around 9pm Central if you have non-topic questions. We’ll be happy to help you with those if we can!
For the record, the most active #blogchat ever had a shade over 4,000 tweets in 2 hours. And ironically, the topic was using Twitter to promote and grow your blog. A similar topic to tomorrow nite, PLUS Chris Brogan will be co-hosting that topic. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see tonite’s volume set the record. Which is a big reason why I wanted to write this post, so everyone can work together so that we have organized chaos, not complete chaos 😉
Sound good? If you have any questions, please feel free to add them in the comments!
I am so sad that blogchat is always in middle of the night my time. (am 7 hours ahead of east coast time)
I’m sorry Susie, but at least you’ll have the transcript!
Thanks.
It’s funny how sometimes it’s the little thing that make you realize all you gave up when you moved to another country.
Really looking forward to this topic, and excited that Chris is guest-ing!
Thanks so much for making #blogchat the highlight of the weekend for the geek set. 🙂
Thank you Aerin 😉
Cool, Mack. Blogchatters really do keep it freeform, but you’re right, there are a lot of side conversations off topic, even just saying hello to people we haven’t talked to in a while. Maybe we can use an alternate hashtag, like #Blogchatsidebar or #Blogchatgreenroom for hello’s & chitchat, for anyone who can’t stay past 9 but wants to greet other chatters. Just a thought. Looking forward to the [controlled] chaos tomorrow. 😉
Hey Amy! Or maybe we could do that before #blogchat starts? In the past couple of months, I’ve been encouraging everyone to show up around 7pm or so to ‘meet and greet’, and share links to their sites, say hi, etc. So we can dive right in at 8pm. Seems to be working well!
LOL, it’s a blogchat marathon sometimes. Yeah, for those who can’t stay late, come early, & vice versa. That’s why we call you “rock star” Mack!
Hope you’ve let Twitter know to fire up extra servers! Thanks for snagging one of the big guns just for us!
This should be a fantastic learning and sharing event. I have been looking forward to it since it was announced. Mack – thanks for all your hard work in building and growing #blogchat. Having Chris participate can only add to what is a wonderful group.
Can anyone say Twitter Fail? Seriously – this is going to be great – just hope Twitter can keep up with us! I’ve been enjoying b2bchat on Thursday nights – I haven’t been to #blogchat in awhile – this sounds like a good one. See you there.
Really looking forward to the chat, and I’m sure there will be a bunch of us on hand to help out any newbies.
Sorry I’m pretty new to this and just found the link over twitter. Where will the stream be and will their be a area where we can ask our questions?
The chat will take place on Twitter, you can follow it by following the hashtag #blogchat. If you want to ask a question, just leave your tweet with the #blogchat hashtag, so we can see it.
Alternatively, you can track the chat here: http://tweetchat.com/room/blogchat
Just sign in via Twitter, and then you can leave tweets there directly to #blogchat!
#Blogchat is always about bedtime for three of my four kids, but I do my best to get them settled beforehand or talk my husband into working solo. It’s one of the most productive and meaningful stretches of time I spend on Twitter and that’s been true regardless of who guested or what the topic was. It’s the instant and intense connection that can happen when that much info is flowing that fast all focused on one topic. I’m looking forward to Chris guest-hosting, but just wanted to say it’s worth being there even if it’s “just” the regular crowd and my friend (yeah, I’m calling you that) Mack. 🙂
Thank you my friend 😉
Thanks for the foresight to organize #BlogChat tonight. I’m expecting this to be a record night and extremely informative.
Mack, great #blogchat last night, thanks for hosting! I love reading and sharing your posts and I have learned so much from them.
Can you let me know which tool you use for measuring tweets during the hour? Summize is not working for me anymore…it gets stuck on a no. and then it doesn’t update. Help….
🙂
MONICA
Hi Monica! Thank you for joining #blogchat last nite, glad you had a good time!
I was using http://wthashtag.com/Blogchat to track the tweets, and after we were an hour into #blogchat we had right at 4,000 tweets for the day. So actually now that I think about it there were probably about 3,800 tweets in the 1st hour, I think we had 200 tweets yesterday about #blogchat before it started.