If you’re a marketer on Twitter, you should be watching and, if possible, participating in Twitter Chats. They’re some of the best conversations to watch on the entire site, because many of the most potent influencers are participating and sharing advice, techniques, tips, and goodies you can’t get anywhere else.
What’s a Twitter Chat?
A Twitter Chat is essentially just a hashtag. The trick is, they’re hashtags that industry influencers have decided to use for specific, guided discussions. A chat moderator or host will select topics to discuss, offer talking points, respond to comments, and keep the whole thing engaging. In addition to having somewhat controlled topics and moderators with some authority to guide discussion, they also tend to take place on a schedule. They might be one-offs, monthly, or weekly events.
I’ve tried to compile as many marketing-focused chats as I can, with associated schedules. I recommend you check them out and see which ones are the most valuable for you to follow and participate in.
As an extra note, please let me know if the information about these chats changes, or if there’s a chat I’ve missed. There are a lot of them out there, so it gets tricky keeping up with all of the relevant information.
The Chat List
Who: HootSuite
When: Thursdays at 3PM ET
What: A community chat centering on social media, technology, and digital marketing. It’s hard to say more; HootSuite is one of the top influencers in the marketing world, so anything they host and moderate is bound to be excellent.
Who: Madalyn Sklar
When: Thursdays at 1PM ET
What: A chat focused around using Twitter for marketing better, hosted by the top rated social media marketer in Houston. Expect to see some crossover with the Twitter Tips podcast.
Who: Aaron Kilby
When: Thursdays at 10PM ET
What: A general chat with social media influencers, experts, and marketing professionals. It covers social marketing, as well as apps, online media, and marketing in general.
Who: Blog Elevated
When: Mondays at 4PM ET
What: A chat centered around industry discussion in social media and, primarily, blogging. Blog Elevated also hosts an annual conference that makes the hashtag explode once a year.
Who: Dan Barker and James Gurd
When: Mondays at 9AM ET
What: A chat focusing on digital marketing and ecommerce, particularly for best practices and setting a good business in motion. Excellent for small and mid-sized businesses looking to get a leg up on their competition, or to get a brand off the ground.
Who: Erika Heald
When: Mondays at 3PM ET
What: A chat focused on content marketing, founded by Jenise Fryatt all the way back in 2013. Currently moderated by Erika Heald, the chief content officer for SpinSucks and native of San Francisco.
Who: Andreea Cococariu
When: Mondays at 9PM ET
What: A weekly Twitter chat hosted by a handful of different people, including Michelle Stinson-Ross and Alan K’necht, covering a wide variety of social media topics. As of this writing, the most recent is tips and marketing strategies for Cyber Monday.
Who: Kirsty Gillentine
When: Wednesdays at 2PM ET
What: A marketer’s guide and discussion for using SnapChat. Fair warning, though, there’s some spam in this tag; people use it interchangeably with #SnapChat, including some NSFW content, so be careful.
Who: ExpressWriters
When: Tuesdays at 11AM ET
What: A chat covering content marketing, with a primary emphasis on content writing and production, ranging from SEO to tools for creation. They also cover analytics and data interpretation, taking feedback from your audience, and more. They often have guest hosts and special events as well.
Who: Matthew Umbro
When: Tuesdays at 12PM ET
What: A weekly chat that covers all things PPC, as well as additional topics that include keyword research, search marketing, and other forms of paid marketing. Chats tend to be recapped on the official blog, PPCChat.co.
Who: The Content Marketing Institute
When: Tuesdays at 12PM ET
What: A general content marketing chat covering best practices, new developments, tools, insights, and tips for marketers of all experience levels. Also includes regular interviews and discussions with various authorities in the industry.
Who: AdWeek
When: Wednesdays at 2PM ET
What: Advertising, marketing, and technology chats in a general sense from a wide range of authorities on various niche subjects.
Who: Kiki L’Italien
When: Tuesdays at 2PM ET
What: A general chat focused around all of the usual marketing topics, with a twist; it’s made specifically for marketers working for associations, or nonprofits as others call them. Includes a lot of sage advice for those working with the nonprofit budget, requiring specialized techniques. This one is stand-out useful for those in that particular narrow niche.
Who: Paper.Li
When: Tuesdays at 2PM ET
What: A general chat with a rotating cast of hosts and interviewees, covering a variety of topics related to community building. Excellent for those looking for advice building and maintaining a brand community, both online and offline.
Who: Adrian Segar
When: Twice weekly; once on Tuesdays at 8PM ET and once on Thursdays at 11am ET
What: A chat with marketers focused on hosting and running events of various types, ranging from small company outings to large scale conferences. Fair warning; this chat has been around a while and the hashtag has adopted some more general use over time. This means there is some degree of unrelated messaging and some spam in the tag, though nothing too bad. Some of it is even relevant to the discussion.
Who: My Community Manager
When: 2PM ET on the first Friday of the month
What: A combination live video chat and Twitter chat centered around various topics that change from month to month. Requires an invite to participate in the video chat portion.
Who: LinkedIn
When: Tuesdays at 8PM ET
What: A chat hosted by Viveka von Rosen of LinkedIn, with assistance from other LinkedIn personages. The chat is primarily focused on actually using LinkedIn, both for personal growth and networking, and for business and brand growth. Topics include engaging with groups, networking with individuals, optimizing profiles, and managing a content stream on the social network.
Who: Pam Moore
When: Tuesdays at 2PM ET
What: A chat focusing on new and innovative strategies for social media and content marketing. Look for tweets from @GetRealChat for content and guidance; the hashtag is also a general use tag. Check archives and additional support and ideas at getrealchat.com.
Who: Brian Honigman
When: 2PM ET on the last Wednesday of the month.
What: A chat that focuses on branding and business questions. However, since this tag is only used for a couple of hours each month, the rest of the time is filled up with an assortment of other content, often similar chats with industry insiders unaffiliated with the core chat. Always a useful resource to check out, though the value varies from industry to industry.
Who: Buffer
When: Wednesdays at 12PM ET
What: A chat hosted by Buffer, one of the leading authorities in social media and marketing online these days and experts in social media timing. Chat archives and highlights are often posted on the official Buffer blog as well, so if your comments are particularly insightful, you might show up with an excellent backlink.
Who: Maria Duron
When: Wednesdays at 11AM ET
What: A chat hosted by the founder Maria Duron, with assistance from Gary Nix and Gerald Moczynski. It centers around branding, including best practices and marketing used for the specific purpose of building a brand. They always have an eye on new trends as well. Recaps of the chats can be found at brandchat.info, as well as a venue to ask questions that can be brought up and addressed during the weekly chats.
Who: SEMRush
When: Wednesdays at 11AM ET
What: A chat hosted by SEO giant SEMRush. Topics tend to cover search marketing on the organic side of things, as well as landing page optimization, web development, SEO in general, and whatever else strikes their interest while they run the chat. Except to get a lot of great information from excellent influencers in this chat.
Who: Various
When: Wednesdays at 1PM ET
What: A chat covering all things social media. This isn’t really a true Twitter Chat, as there is no central organization, no core moderator, and no primary focus. It’s also a general tag often used for general discussion on all things social media. For example, it’s currently blown up talking about Twitter’s closure of Vine. Feel free to use this tag for your own marketing as well as participation in the more organized section of the chat.
Who: Sprout Social
When: Wednesdays at 3PM ET
What: A chat hosted by Sprout Social employee Sarah Nagel. It’s entirely focused on social media marketing and tends to follow a broad question format, where the moderator asks a handful of questions and simply waits and responds to answers as they come. They also don’t seem to have a central archive, just various CTAs to go visit Sprout Social’s blog.
Who: The Puget Sound American Marketing Association and Point It Digital Marketing
When: Sporadic
What: This is a high quality chat that picks eight high interest questions and focuses on them for a lengthy and in-depth discussion. As such, it’s not a consistent thing, and chats don’t come reliably. Keep an eye on the Point It event calendar to see when their next event will be, and don’t be surprised if it’s not on Twitter. Their webinars are great as well.
Who: Hubspot
When: Tuesdays at 1PM ET
What: Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing team – one of several excellent marketing teams, really – focuses this chat around inbound marketing. It tends to last longer than the advertised hour, and it’s not always active, but it’s a great tag to scroll back through and view if you’re interested in that form of marketing at all. Hint: you should be.
Who: Kelly Lieberman and Kim Vij
When: Wednesdays at 9AM ET
What: A chat focused entirely on Pinterest marketing, from two Pinterest experts. Includes marketing tips and tricks, best practices, Pinterest news, and tools to help with your marketing. It’s not for everyone, but if you have an interest in Pinterest marketing, you should be following this chat, as well as the Twitter accounts of the two hosts, which can be found in the profile for @Pin_Chat.
Who: Daniel Newman and Brian Fanzo
When: Thursdays at 12PM ET
What: A chat focusing not quite on marketing, but on the technology that powers many of our services and tools these days; the cloud. It’s all about technology, cloud computing, and big data, as well as the ways you can leverage these for the benefit of your business. Remember, though, there’s no such thing as the cloud; it’s just someone else’s computer.
Who: AWeber
When: Every second Thursday at 12PM ET
What: A chat that centers around email marketing, covering a wide variety of topics in that niche. They have best practices, tool recommendations, insights, tips for content and for conversion funnels, and a rotating guest list that features a new host for each biweekly chat.
Who: Marketo
When: Thursdays at 1PM ET
What: A general marketing chat that is hosted by Marketo and features a different brand or influencer each week, who bring their own interests and topics of discussion. Not only is this a great chat to follow, it’s one that can get you a lot of exposure and a sizable following if you become one of their hosts.
Who: Search Marketing Weekly
When: Thursdays at 1PM ET
What: A search engine optimization chat that focuses on high-level techniques and information. This isn’t really meant for newcomers, and basic questions will generally be ignored in favor of high-level discussions. On the other hand, the hashtag is often used for general SEO information, which means newbies can get some utility out of it and participate in the chat when they’re more knowledgeable.
