Since March of 2009, #Blogchat has been one of the largest and most popular chats on all of Twitter, and one of the longest-running. In March of 2011, #Blogchat went offline and began appearing at select events in a Live format. Since making its debut at South By Southwest Interactive in 2011, Live #Blogchat has appeared at some of the top industry events, including Blog World and New Media Expo, Content Marketing World and Marketing Profs B2B Forum. The Live #Blogchat format is a favorite with event attendees as it allows them to interact directly with fellow bloggers and marketers to discuss common challenges faced in their content creation efforts. The Live format for #Blogchat is also much more relaxed, allowing for an open and interactive discussion among attendees, which helps facilitate learning.
If you would like to add a Live #Blogchat to your conference or company event, there are two ways to make that happen:
1 – Live #Blogchat as a session. This is the most popular option as the discussion is happening live, off Twitter, at your event. This gives attendees a chance to have an open and interactive discussion. It’s a completely different experience from other sessions which feature one speaker or a panel, with Live #Blogchat, the discussion is free-flowing and happens among the attendees and the facilitator (myself). It’s also a nice change-of-pace for attendees and can help your event stand out from the crowd as being different and offering a unique experience.
To give you a better idea of what this option can look like ‘in the wild’, check out this video that the team at Huddle Productions made from footage and interviews during a Live #Blogchat which was done for Dell in 2011 as part of the company’s #DellCAP event. For this Live #Blogchat, Dell invited advocates and customers to attend and engage in a free-flowing discussion of how Dell was using blogging and social media to connect with its customers and provide customer service for them. Dell was then able to take this feedback from attendees and followup as well as incorporate it to improve business processes:
2 – Live #Blogchat on-site as a Twitter chat. Each Sunday night, #Blogchat is held on Twitter as a chat around blogging and social media topics. It is one of the longest running and most popular chats in the history of Twitter, and some companies prefer to bring a Live #Blogchat to its event in that form. The difference in this format is that the #Blogchat conversation is happening on Twitter instead of offline at your event. The advantage to this option is that you can harness the power of #Blogchat to drive interest in your event on Twitter. For example, if your event is using a unique hashtag (say, #MyConf2016), that hashtage can be leveraged before and during the #Blogchat to help expose more people to your event.
Additionally, this option allows you to invite attendees to participate in the Live #Blogchat, and can be used to drive foottraffic to a particular area within your event. For example, let’s say your event has a ‘Bloggers’ Lounge’. You could hold the Live #Blogchat on Twitter at that Bloggers Lounge, and this would encourage attendees that were interested in participating to bring their laptop or mobile device to the Bloggers’ Lounge and join in! This is also perfect if you have vendors or sponsors set up in the Bloggers’ Lounge as you would be driving foot traffic to this space, which would make them very happy!
3 – Host a Live #Blogchat both on Twitter and in a session! This gives you the best of both worlds, the ability to leverage Twitter to drive online interest in your event, then use the free-form conversation of a Live #Blogchat to give your attendees an interesting and educational session that will make your event stand out.
Ready to take your event to the next level with a Live #Blogchat? Email me and let’s create a custom plan for your event or conference.
Want to learn how your event or company can sponsor the #Blogchat on Twitter on a monthly basis? Here’s pricing and what’s included.