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Have you ever had a student say to you, "Wow, this is so much fun, do we have to stop?" This is the kind of excitement that children have shared with teachers after participating in the New Zealand school-wide Twitter chat called Kidsedchatnz.

The Kidsedchatnz idea was born out of numerous worldwide Twitter chats for educators. If educators could use Twitter to connect, collaborate, share, and learn, then why couldn't students?

So What Exactly Is Kidsedchatnz and How Does It Work?

Kidsedchatnz is a weekly Twitter chat between New Zealand classes and students, every Thursday at 2:00-3:00PM. It is organised by seven New Zealand teachers via Twitter, each taking a turn to run the chats.

Each week, a topic is chosen, and 5-10 discussion questions are generated on that topic. All topics and questions are posted on the Kidsedchatnz blog prior to the chat so that students can prepare beforehand. The teacher in charge is responsible for picking the topics, generating the questions and moderating the chats on the day. Moderating involves posting the questions and encouraging conversation between the students.

During the weekly session, questions are posted every 5-10 minutes on Twitter for the students to discuss and respond to. Some of the topics covered so far have been:

Literacy

Maths

Technology

Digital citizenship

Teachers

Education outside the classroom

Rules

Courage

Culture

Learning

Homework

Modern Learning Environments

Football World Cup

Elections and Student Issues

Passions and Talents

Sports

Hack Your Learning

Inquiry Learning

Chat topics are quite often flipped. This is where the questions are based on material that the students have to read or watch prior to the chat. Anywhere between 20 and 30 classes participate in Kidsedchatnz each week, with anywhere between 500-1,000 tweets being recorded each session. After each Kidsedchatnz session, a "Tweet of the Week" is announced for the best tweet during that session. This encourages the students to produce quality tweets.

Kidsedchatnz has been running since September 2012 and has seen children from all over New Zealand connect and share ideas. The excitement at connecting with others has been infectious. Abby, a Year Three student at Russell Street School, says, "Kidsedchatnz is my favourite hour of the week! I love putting my ideas out there for everyone to see."

Kidsedchatnz has also gained national recognition in New Zealand by winning the Interface Magazine Awards for Best Teaching with ICT. This year we had our first Trans-Tasman Kidsedchatnz between New Zealand and Australia. The chat was based on ANZAC Day, which is celebrated on both sides of the Tasman.

So Why Should You Take Part in the Twitter Chats?

These chats give students an authentic audience for sharing and reflecting on their learning. They connect with other classes and students throughout the country, sharing ideas and thoughts while developing their reading, writing, and thinking skills.

Twitter is an authentic place to learn about digital citizenship. Classroom teacher and co-organiser Reid Walker from Henderson School says, "Students relish being able to connect with other students from across New Zealand. It's an authentic and unique learning task thanks to the variety of topics each week."

So How Can You Start a School-Wide Twitter Chat in Your District?

1. Start a blog for your Twitter chat so that you have somewhere to post your topics and questions.

2. Connect with teachers on Twitter to spread the word that you are going to start a chat for students, and advertise the time and date.

3. Invite teachers and their classes to participate in the chat. There are lots of different classes on Twitter these days.

4. Start a Kidsedchat Twitter account from which the moderator can post the topic questions. Let the students know that they can find the questions under this account.

5. Create a Kidsedchat Twitter list that the classes can follow on the day of the chat. A Twitter list groups tweets together more effectively than hashtags, which can attract spammers. Classes will need to subscribe to the Kidsedchat list, and you will need to add them to the list as well. Check out our How To Videos to help with this.

So How Can You Get Your Class Involved in the Twitter Chat?

1. Start a class Twitter account for your students to tweet from.

2. Subscribe to the Kidsedchat list and follow that list during the chat.

3. Before you start, teach your children how to use Twitter. Make sure they know all about timelines, lists, connect, and retweets.

4. It's a good idea to create classroom experts that can help other students with their tweeting. You don't have to have your whole class take part in a Twitter chat. A small group works well.

5. Always check the chat website prior to the session to get familiar with the week's topic. Preparation is the key to quality learning and quality tweeting.

6. Use the Tweetdeck app when taking part. This allows you to create columns, making it easy for the kids to follow all the tweets.

How do you use Twitter or other social media with your students?

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Have you ever had a student say to you, "Wow, this is so much fun, do we have to stop?" This is the kind of excitement that children have shared with teachers after participating in the New Zealand school-wide Twitter chat called Kidsedchatnz. The Kidsedchatnz idea was born out of numerous worldwide Twitter chats for educators.

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How to manage student accounts. 40 Student accounts by default.

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Kids Ed Chat New Zealand Blog

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Welcome to kidsedchatnz, 2016! Our first chat for the year is on Wednesday the 10th February at 2pm and the topic is 'Greatness'!
P lease watch the video below before taking part.

Q1 . What are you great at doing? How did you get great at it?
Q2. "Greatness is for all of us." How are you going to be great this year? How are you going to achieve this?
Q3. Name a person who you think is great. Why are they great?
Q4. If you could be great at anything what would it be? What would you like to be great at at school?
The video says, "Greatness is not born, it's made." What does this mean? Do you believe this?
What is great about your new classroom? What would your greatest learning environment look like?
Q7. What great things would you like to learn about this year? What are you looking forward to?
Describe what a 'Great Teacher' looks like?
Q9. Finish this sentence. Greatness starts......
Q10. Write a short story, poem or sentence using these 3 words: Greatness - Effort - Teamwork

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Welcome to kidsedchatnz, 2016! Our first chat for the year is on Wednesday the 10th February at 2pm and the topic is 'Greatness'! P lease watch the video below before taking part. Q1 . What are you great at doing? How did you get great at it? Q2.

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How to set up accounts for students

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...and why Blogger was my classroom choice over WordPress and EduBlogs

As you may remember from a previous post, Redefining Mathematics Education with Student Blogs, I am very excited to get my students blogging on their own blogs. With the general premise being that publishing content for the world to see, students will take more ownership of their learning and work they produce. Although I was psyched to implement blogs as soon as possible, I knew that I needed to do some serious thinking about what blogging platform would be ideal for my students.

Originally, I thought that WordPress would be the platform of choice as I have had experience creating many blogs in the past and they can be as simple or complex as you'd like. While I love the customizations possible with WordPress, I worried whether the options would be distractions for the students. I quickly changed my focus to the blogging platform that would be the easiest to setup and most efficient for students to post content from an iPad. I'm pretty picky when it comes to how my blogs/websites look, but this is not purpose of student blogs and it took me a while to realize this.

Sealing the Deal: A New Google Apps for Education Domain

Just last month I recently introduced a Google Apps for Education (GAFE) domain for my school and I had made a commitment to experiment using Google Drive as our cloud-computing solution over Dropbox. Since all students in our school would have access to a Google account for Google Apps like Gmail, Calendar, Drive and Blogger, I really couldn't say no.

After having my students setup their blogs using Blogger today, I'm happy to say that the choice was a great one. Creating a student blog with Blogger is quick and easy, with just a few steps outlined below.

How to Create Student Blogs with Blogger

Assuming students already have a Google account through your own Google Apps for Education domain or a personal Google account, have them go to www.blogger.com and are not in the Blogger iPad app for the initial creation of their blog. The app is great for creating posts, but the blog must be created prior to using the app.

Step 1 - Tap on New Blog

Step 2 - Name Your Blog

Enter a title for your blog as well as a URL for the blog. Make sure students know that the URL must be unique, so common titles may already be taken. Reminding students about making catchy titles with easy to remember URLs is best practice in order to be found.

Step 3 - Add Teacher as an Author/Administrator

It is always a good idea to have students add you as an author or even better, an administrator. Not only does this allow you to modify settings and posts on each student blog, but they will also appear in your list of blogs in your own blogger account. This makes it easier to manage student blogs throughout the school year.

You can do this by accessing the Settings from the drop-down menu.

Scroll down to Permissions and select Add Authors to enter in your email address.

Step 4 - Logout of Web-Based Blogger

At this point, students can logout of the web-based version of blogger and begin posting via the Blogger iPad app.

As a quick note, after being added as an author, you must accept the invitation before the student blogs will appear in your own Blogger account. I accepted the invitations during class, but it took longer than expected. In the future, I'll likely just accept them at night in preparation for the next day.

Step 5 - Create Posts via the Blogger App!

Students can now login to the Blogger iPad app and begin creating content. Just by reading some of the creative blog titles students have used makes me think that I want to allow students to blog about other topics on their own time as well. We will use labels (categories) to keep things organized and I will be allowing students to label posts unrelated to math as something like "non-math", "unrelated" or "naddamath" - whatever they want.

Here's a couple screenshots of how quick and easy students can create a post on their new Blogger blogs:

Are you blogging with your students in math or another subject-area? If so, let us know how it's going!

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Blogger for Learning - Setting Up Individual Student Blogs in Maths

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As you may remember from a previous post, Redefining Mathematics Education with Student Blogs, I am very excited to get my students blogging on their own blogs. With the general premise being that publishing content for the world to see, students will take more ownership of their learning and work they produce.

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Many regard Twitter as quite a useless social media sharing portal. Some have this negative opinion, mainly because of the fact Twitter allows you to "tweet" or post only 140 characters in length. This length equals the text of a regular SMS, and for some this is simply not enough. However, Twitter proves to be an extremely helpful little educational tool. By using Twitter in education, you can post only a few short sentences, but that is exactly enough to transmit the essence of your message.

Leading such busy lives, people do not have the time or the mood to read long walls of text. They prefer to capture only the essence, and using Twitter in education helps you with that. This social media portal is widely used among the academia all across the world. Students, journalists, actors, politicians, important leaders, and sports people... they all use Twitter. So how can such a tool really prove helpful in the educational field?

1. Tweet homework and assignments.

Both teachers and students can easily and quickly tweet details of homework and assignments using Twitter in education. You can also include links to important online sources/pages, and don't forget to mention the due dates in your tweet. This way, everyone with an account will receive a notification, and they can share, forward or respond to the tweet.

2. Get important educational resources.

Many times teachers are simply out of ideas regarding interactive and creative methods of teaching. Now, by searching for " Twitter for Teachers" resources, you can get instant access to hundreds of important links. Get insightful ideas from other teachers around the world, follow the good examples or share your own efficient teaching methods. Twitter is a good tool for professional development.

3. Student collaboration.

The email seems to become an old fashioned tool for collaboration. Now teachers can motivate students to use Twitter in order to work on collaborative assignments. This way, you can also intervene at any point by giving a good advice, sharing an interesting link with your students, or helping them with important resources for research.

4. Announcing field trips.

Students love surprises. Therefore, write a creative 140 characters long description of the great field trip you will all take together... if the classroom results are good for everyone. Within minutes, you will see dozens of messages congratulating you for the idea. Plus, by advertising the field trip through Twitter, everyone will get a real time notification.

5. Subscribe to relevant hashtags.

Discuss with students in the classroom what issues they would like to follow on Twitter. Have a talk on the relevant issues for your class, and then decide together what hashtags you should all follow. By getting regular news updates through following, there will always be an interesting topic to debate in class. Using Twitter in education provides a great way of socialization and encourages students to speak up for the issues they believe in, and become opinionated.

6. Tweet about changes in the program.

If there is any change your students should know about, you can use Twitter to inform them. For example, if the class will be held in another classroom or if the class will be skipped the next day. Students receive instant notifications, and they can share with fellow students. If there is any last minute change regarding the school program, just send out a short tweet.

7. Organizing contests.

Have students prepare for your next class by writing a nice essay, or by solving a tough math problem. Give them incentives, and motivate them to enter the contest. Students love to interact through social media, and you will get a great number of participants in your school related contest.

8. Syncing Twitter with relevant blogs.

It is very useful for teachers, parents and students. Twitter allows you to sync with WordPress blogs, and all update notifications will be received through Twitter. This way, everyone can tune in and check out the fresh updates of different logs, without actually entering separately each address. Teachers can check the posts of their students by clicking on the link, while students can follow the posts and updates of their peers.

9. Research tool for students.

Any student can quickly and easily find high authority research material using Twitter in education. All they need to do is type in the search bar relevant keywords, and they will receive a list with dozens of relevant websites and blogs. There is also the option to search for specific phrases, key figures, discussion topics, relevant discussion forums, etc.

10. Network through hashtag chats.

Search for any topic that you are highly interested in, and join other great groups available on Twitter. Make new friends, express your opinion on an academic matter, and ask your fellow students or teachers to join. You will form one huge and powerful army of experts and debaters on topics that are of high interest to you.

11. Share interesting topics.

Help your fellow students get a better understanding of a tough topic for class. If you found an interesting article, a website or even someone worth following on Twitter, share it with other students. The same goes for teachers, who should definitely share educational materials and links with students using Twitter as the main platform.

12. Create a unique classroom hashtag.

With so many hashtags available out there, it is quite difficult to find a unique one. However, find such a relevant word and use it for your classroom hashtag. Then ask all students and teachers to join, and this will be your little virtual online classroom. Hashtags are used to find groups of interest and then connect with them, so make sure you give away your hashtag only to those you want to join the respective group.

13. Write mini reviews.

Both teachers and students can use Twitter to write very short and concise reviews of a movie or a book. This way, you will make a recommendation to watch or not to watch a certain movie. Connect with your teachers and fellow students even for entertainment through Twitter. The reviews should be short, but they may contain links to the full article or review you posted on a website for example.

14. Surveying students.

Now and then it is worth engaging students into a poll. As a teacher you can now inform your students about the new survey through Twitter. Find out what they like/dislike about your class, what changes they would want to make, what books they prefer to read, or what recreational activities they would prefer more. It is amazing how many essential things you will learn about your students by having them complete such a survey (Twitter link to Survey Monkey for example).

15. Teach through play.

You could invite students to write collaboratively a nice poem. You suggest the first two lines on Twitter, and then everyone else will try to come up with a new rhyming and relevant line. This is particularly useful for creative writing or English class, and students will love your ingeniousness. Instead of a poem, you could ask them to write a letter, with each student adding a few lines until they create a nice story. Then, you will read the entire work of art in class and analyze it together.

Conclusion

These are only a few ideas on how to successfully use Twitter in education. This micro-blogging portal is not only for entertainment, but it can have a very important role in academia as well. Students, teachers and parents will all benefit of being active on Twitter. The portal also helps forming very united and compact groups, and it helps increase the productivity and responsiveness of students. Now the entire classroom can join Twitter, and everyone can start using all the amazing features offered by the portal: Advertise, inform, share, respond, create a buzz, invite... and anything else you can imagine!

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15 Ways To Use Twitter In Education (For Students And Teachers Alike) - eLearning Industry

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Many regard Twitter as quite a useless social media sharing portal. Some have this negative opinion, mainly because of the fact Twitter allows you to "tweet" or post only 140 characters in length. This length equals the text of a regular SMS, and for some this is simply not enough.

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The following spectrum takes a new approach for using twitter in the classroom. While other posts offer a list of ideas, the following spectrum is roughly structured to increase in complexity from left to right:

Watch, which is passive.

Talk, this adds interaction.

Produce, which implies an even greater interaction between an audience, a purpose, and a media design-in this case, using twitter to actually produce something original.

We'll have more on this concept soon, including a similar spectrum for the iPad.

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The following spectrum takes a new approach for using twitter in the classroom. While other posts offer a list of ideas, the following spectrum is roughly structured to increase in complexity from left to right: Watch, which is passive. Talk, this adds interaction.

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A Teacher's Guide For Creating a School Twitter Chat

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by Nellie Mitchell

A twitter chat is an amazing resource for professional development and gives educators the option to participate in their PJs, from the comfort of their own home! It is essentially a chat room, with everyone sharing and talking and hanging out virtually-discussing learning strategies, classroom management techniques, and technology.

A good chat stimulates great conversation, but also has the power to motivate an entire district. It is a way to build and develop a growth mindset that is neither forced nor overwhelming. The motivated, technology-enthusiasts will jump at the chance to learn about the next big thing from their peers--and will genuinely pursue new ideas. A twitter chat can help teachers develop their PLN-as they figure out whom to follow, find great infographics and articles, and connect with other educators locally and globally.

Twitter is always a great resource for PD, but some teachers either don't have time to use it or don't know how. A district twitter chat gives teachers a chance to send a few tweets, and use hashtags in an environment that feels safe. It also gives them a chance to use twitter in real time-while watching TV or catching up on Facebook--so there isn't as much pressure to 'figure it out' in an afternoon meeting. It also provides immediate feedback-someone is definitely going to read and respond to the tweet, and teachers feel like they are part of something-a dialog that is much bigger and more powerful than a meeting in the school library.

Webb City School District in Missouri has been hosting monthly chats for over a year. Teachers in the district say that the chat is their favorite resource to gain relevant new ideas and collaborate with teachers in other buildings.
What Works
By making the chat time consistent (e.g., the first Tuesday of the month from 8-9 p.m.), this can help teachers to keep track and participate when their schedule allows. It is optional, so if teachers have sports or family obligations, it is okay if they can't make it to every chat.
What To Do Before The Chat

Pick a theme each month to focus on. Write about 5-6 prompts for an hour of chatting.

Send out a list of questions a week before the chat. This is incredibly helpful for teachers who are very busy!

Use Remind-to get a reminder tweet 30 minutes before the chat starts.

Use Twuffer or Future Tweets to schedule some tweets in advance. It can get tricky to read and respond to tweets if a lot of people are in the chat-scheduling and thinking about your responses to the prompts in advance helps. You will get a lot more out of a chat if you are present-scheduling the tweets is not the same as participating in the live chat--and it is obvious who is there and who isn't.

What To Do During The Chat

Just introduce yourself with first name, school name and grade.

Use a common hashtag for the chat and answer each prompt with A1, A2, according to the question. Also use Ts and Ss to shorten 'teachers' and 'students.'

Use TweetDeck to follow the chat in its own little window.

Favorite anything that is shared that you might want to see again later or read later.

If you are managing the chat or behind the scenes-you could use Tweet Binder to get data on the statistics of the chat. Tweet Binder tells you who is who, how many tweets are sent, etc.

What To Do After The Chat

Use Storify to document and collect all of the tweets from the chat and archive it on the district website.

Here is a compilation resource --how to use hastags, twitter quick start guide, and archived chats from the Webb City District that you can use as a reference if you are starting a district chat for the first time.

How To Incentivize Participation
Many teachers with a Twitter account have never even sent a single tweet. One idea to pull in those hesitant teachers into the chat is to offer a little incentive. Something simple that is relatively easy to manage but also worth the hour of time (or sometimes two if they schedule some tweets in advance).

The building with the highest percentage participation in the monthly chat earns a free jeans day. With such a simple incentive, many people are encouraged to get involved-parents, aids, cooks, and even custodians chime in with a tweet or two during the chat to represent their building!

Each person who participates in the chat gets a sticker for a free jeans day. The #wcedchat is even strong in the summer when there is no incentive-but the jeans coupon is a great bonus during the school year!

Each person who participates in the chat gets to leave 15 (or even 30?) minutes early the next day (or the next PD day).

Other ideas? Please leave some suggestions in the comments!

Make It A Committee Effort
Create a district team of dedicated teachers from all levels who are enthusiastic about the chat. The committee members sign up for various tasks to make each chat a success.

The committee can use a Google Doc to generate discussion and take notes after an initial meeting. A GoogleDoc can be a great place to draft the questions/prompts, sign up for jobs and delegate tasks. Also, the document can grow and develop over time, with everyone adding their thoughts and ideas for long-term goals.

Possible tasks for the committee each month?

1. Email staff with dates, times AND questions a week before the chat

2. Welcome people to the chat (2 people greet and say hi to others as they check in)

3. Welcome and close chat

4. Tweet out a reminder 1 week before the day of chat

5. Tweet questions 1, 3, and 5

6. Tweet questions 2, 4, and 6

7. Document participants and share with admin (to award stickers of participation)

8. Give twitter tips and archive chat

9. Email staff about incentive winners

Another great part about using a GoogleDoc to collaborate-the committee members can add new ideas, draft chat topics, and sign up for tasks at their convenience. By collaborating virtually, teachers and administrators involved in the chat committee don't have to add tons of extra meetings to their schedule.
A Few Themed Chat Ideas To Get You Started

Data

Mobile Learning

Personalized Learning

Digital Literacy

Reflection

Summer PD

Back to School

Parent teacher conferences

Digital Citizenship

Lesson Planning Tools

Differentiated Instruction

Favorite #edtech

Sample Letter To Colleagues One Week Before The Chat
Happy Summer to all. I hope that everyone can find some time to join us for #wcedchat Tuesday at 8pm. This chat will give us a chance to share some of the ideas that we have gained from our summer experiences. Here are the questions for this week:

Q1 (8:05) What was your favorite part of summer? (Professionally or personally) #wcedchat

Q2 (8:15) What new things have you discovered over the summer that you are excited to try in your classroom? #wcedchat

Q3 (8:25) Advice for new teachers: What can you do the first few days that will make a dramatic difference the remainder of the year? #wcedchat

Q4 (8:35) Do you have a favorite or new back to school "get to know you" activity? #wcedchat

Q5 (8:45) What app/web tool are you excited to use this year? How will you use it? #wcedchat

Q6 (8:50): What can you take from tonight's #wcelem to use as you think about the upcoming school year? #wcedchat
Want to join a district chat before you start one?
The next Webb City #wcedchat is August 4th, 8-9 p.m. and the prompts are above if you want to join! Here are more of the best twitter chats for teachers in 2015.
Other Ways You Can Use Twitter In Your School Use Twitter as a Mainstream Tool for School Improvement A Lesson Using Twitter must Have a Social Component 10 Reasons Twitter Works in Education A Teacher's Guide For Creating A School Twitter Chat

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A Teacher's Guide For Creating A School Twitter Chat

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by Nellie Mitchell A twitter chat is an amazing resource for professional development and gives educators the option to participate in their PJs, from the comfort of their own home! It is essentially a chat room, with everyone sharing and talking and hanging out virtually-discussing learning strategies, classroom management techniques, and technology.

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Steps to creating a Twitter Chat

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Ready to host a Twitter chat?

Do you want to improve your chances of success?

Making sure you have a few basic building blocks in place will help you start your Twitter chat off with an audience that's ready to participate.

In this article you'll discover four tips to help you start a successful Twitter chat.

Listen to this article:

Listen now: Play in new window | Download

#1: Choose Your Time Slot With Care

If you want lots of people to show up, you need to schedule your Twitter chat at the optimal time for your audience. The more people who are available to chat, the greater your chances for engagement.

Use a tool like Followerwonk to figure out when your followers are most active, so you'll know the best time to host your chat.

After you log in, click on the Analyze tab, enter your Twitter handle and click Do It.

You'll see an hourly breakdown of when your followers are most active.

Look at the chart to discover the optimal times to host your Twitter chat and get the most engagement from your audience. There's no point in hosting a chat when the majority of your followers aren't online.
Reduce Scheduling Conflicts
In addition to knowing when your Twitter followers are most active, you'll also want to take into account the times during which other popular chats are scheduled.

To reduce scheduling conflicts, be sure to consult the Twitter chat schedule from TweetReports. This is a helpful resource which shows the times and days other popular Twitter chats are scheduled to take place. Checking this document will help you avoid scheduling your chat during the same time as another chat your audience (or you) might be interested in attending.

You might also want to review the Twitter chat schedule from Twubs. It shows you an active list of upcoming Twitter chats.

By consulting the schedules of other popular Twitter chats, you'll ensure that your chat doesn't conflict with them. That way you don't run the risk of people not attending yours. If you're just starting out, this can be very beneficial.

#2: Invite Relevant Guests and Influencers to Participate

To maximize your reach and overall engagement, make a point to invite special guests and relevant people to participate in your chat. For example, SEMrush invites special guests to their Twitter chats and sends direct tweets to influential people inviting them to participate.

You can identify influential people using Followerwonk. It allows you to find and connect with influencers in your niche, making it the perfect tool for finding relevant guests to join your Twitter chat.

To identify influencers, click the Search Bios tab.

Next, you will want to search for a keyword that is relevant to your niche or the topic of your chat. Enter your search term and select Search Twitter Profiles from the pop-up menu. If needed, click the More Options button to see more filtering options like location and minimum followers. Then click Do It.

Followerwonk shows you a list of relevant people for your topic of choice.

All you have to do is decide which people you want to target from the list, and invite them to be special guests or ask them to participate in your chat.

#3: Incorporate Eye-Catching Visuals

When you promote and run your own Twitter chat, you'll want to get as much engagement as you can. Visual content might provide the extra boost you need to connect with your audience.

There are several ways you can incorporate visuals into your Twitter chats. You can use images to promote your upcoming chats, ask questions during the chat and recap answers to all of the questions that people asked during the chat.

Here are a few tips to help you design more appealing images for your Twitter chats:

Pick an attractive color palette using a site like COLOURlovers.

Ensure there's adequate contrast between the background and text in your images. If you need help identifying contrasting colors, consult the Adobe Color Wheel.

Use only one or two fonts per design.

#4: Streamline Engagement With a Management Tool

After you've laid the groundwork for your chat, it's time to run it. While it's possible to manage the chat by following the chat hashtag, that's not the ideal approach. Instead, you'll want to use a dedicated tool like TweetChat to manage your chat.

TweetChat will add the hashtag of the chat to every reply for you. This saves you time and ensures you don't forget to include the hashtag. This tool also automatically updates with the latest tweets in the conversation so you don't have to keep refreshing your Twitter feed to follow along.

To get started with TweetChat, enter your chat hashtag in the search box and click Go.

Once you've connected your Twitter account with TweetChat, you can easily manage your chat and follow the conversation.

A tool like TweetChat makes it easy to manage your chat and lets you to stay on top of the conversation, engaging more users in real-time.
Conclusion
Twitter chats are a great way to engage with your audience and grow your business. By using the steps outlined in this post, you'll be on your way to hosting a successful chat, week in and week out.

What do you think? Have you hosted a Twitter chat? If so, what tips can you offer? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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How to Create a Twitter Chat: 4 Success Tips

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Ready to host a Twitter chat? Do you want to improve your chances of success? Making sure you have a few basic building blocks in place will help you start your Twitter chat off with an audience that's ready to participate. In this article you'll discover four tips to help you start a successful Twitter chat.