By Maria Elena Duron
Five years ago I created a Twitter chat that I still moderate and is recognized as one of the top Twitterchats for business and marketing by Mashable, Simply Measured, and Cision. Actual “in the trenches” experience has made me specifically discerning about the many Twitter chat tools available to participants and moderators.
Even though we have hundreds of people participating in our weekly chat, there are many others who are intimidated to participate in a chat. Some describe a Twitter chat as insanity while others lurk and only chime in occasionally because it’s tough to keep up and to hear what’s being shared amidst all the retweets and side conversations.
I’ve tried many tools that market that they make a chat more manageable and have found that even as experienced as I am, it’s tough to utilize their tools in the fast-paced speed of a Twitter chat. One great resources that will help you to focus in on the conversation and not have to work about the mechanics of a chat is Nurph. With Nurph, you can invite your friends to join in a real-time, fast discussion.
I do not receive any compensation from Nurph. In fact, I discovered it after a brandchat participant introduced me to it and recommended that I give it a try. I have never been more impressed with a tool.
As a participant, you will appreciate the speed and simplicity of the discussion. What about the moderator? What are the advantages of using Nurph to moderate chat forums and discussions?
Ease of use
Scheduling chats using Nurph is as simple as logging into the platform and adding the time, topic of discussion, and particular questions the discussion will revolve around. And that’s it! The discussion flows naturally, like instant messaging, and even better, every tweet has the chat’s hashtag automatically added to it. If your hashtag is meant to promote your business, you can be sure many people will see your hashtag.
Besides ease of scheduling, the RSVP feature allows you to highlight special guests to the Twitter chat. When participants RSVP, you have a good idea of how many people to expect during your discussion, so you are better prepared in your moderation duties.
Track participation
With Nurph, you can tell who and how many participants your particular discussion has. Also, you have the ability to know the chat’s sideline observers. You could also adapt the chat to include the sideline observers, so they do not feel left out.
If there are tweets that you would rather people do not read (offensive comments, sales pitches, etc.), you can choose to block them by typing “block @User,” with @User referring to the particular user’s Twitter username.
Useful statistics
At the conclusion of your chat, Nurph updates your page with some awesome statistics that you can use to guide your next chats, like Top Contributors, Most Retweeted (tweets), and the total number of tweets the chat generated. Each chat question is recorded alongside the number of tweets to each one, so you know which particular aspect of the discussion participants resonated most with.
Through the data generated, you can replay the past chats and identify the strong moderating points, and when the conversation veered off-topic. It is like how athletes review game tape to find out what they did best and where they failed. With the Replay feature, you can go through the discussion again, and even find points you missed.
I appreciate tools that free me up to focus on the conversation and the people involved in a conversation. And, while I’ve tried over a dozen different Twitter chat tools, this is one that I actually use every week and recommend.
Author Bio:
Maria Elena Duron is Editor-in-Chief of the Personal Branding Blog. Duron is a small business marketing coach with Buzz to Bucks, and the creator of #brandchat – recognized as one of the top 12 business and marketing chats. She is a published expert on branding and marketing inEntrepreneur Magazine. She speaks regularly to small businesses on marketing that’s profit driven and appreciation marketing. Duron is also a partner at Appreciation at Work.
