This is a guest post from  Deborah Corn

Greetings Sales Pros!

I am truly honored Paul has invited to share some thoughts on Twitter Chats with you, so let’s get right to it!

Twitter is a very powerful tool for business, and Twitter Chats (some call them Tweet Chats) are a fantastic way to connect with peers, target audiences, and those who influence target audiences. Twitter Chats bring people and ideas together, help chatters to grow their connections, and grow their relevance as thought-leaders. Twitter Chats also facilitate knowledge sharing, engagement, and open the door to relationships beyond the platform.

In essence, a Twitter Chat is a live event that takes place through Twitter at a specific time, within a specific time frame, with a designated hashtag (#) focused on a general topic such as sales, or in the case of my weekly chat, print. The chat is run by a host who presents questions to participants, and with everyone using the designated hashtag as the common thread, it is possible to have productive conversations and share ideas with 140 characters or less.

I took over the reigns of #PrintChat (http://printchat.printmdiacentr.com) from Quad Graphics in April of 2012 after a series of successful chats I guest hosted for them. Since then #PrintChat has grown to average a consistent 7-8+ MILLION impressions per chat. That is pretty significant return of reach and awareness the chatters receive for a 1-hour investment of time each week. And that reach and awareness leads to more connections and more engagements outside of the chat, which can easily lead to more prospects and more customers – but I’ll leave the sales advice to Paul, and stay in my lane by offering three ways to Twitter Chat like a rock star:

Find Your Tweeps! Finding a relevant chat to join is the first step. Do a quick search for “Twitter Chats” and a few resources will pop up that list the consistent ones. Use Twitter to search for relevant hashtag terms – like #print or #sales, and if there are related chats you will see those hashtags pop up in the results.

Participate! Ok, you might say DUH on that, but trust me for every chat participant there are a countless amount of lurkers watching. The goal is to offer meaningful contributions and use the power of the group to create the reach and awareness you’d never be able to recreate on your own – well unless you are a giant brand with millions of followers. But you cannot benefit if you don’t participate, so don’t be afraid and get something relevant out in the stream.

Connect! You found your chat/s, you participate; don’t drop the ball when it comes to the follow up. Everyone chatting is relevant to your world, even your competitors. While you might not want to connect directly with them, don’t miss out on connecting with the people/companies following your competition. If they follow back, you created a valuable relationship.

But wait, there’s more…

Build It! If you cannot find a relevant chat, create one. Just be mindful that nobody wants to talk about YOU, besides you; self-serving chats are useless to attracting and building a community around your topic. Twitter chats can also be hard to follow, so check out platforms like Nurph.com to make it easier to participate, and provide replays like I do here: http://printchat.printmediacentr.com/archived-chats/

With all that said, the best advice I can give is jump in. If you take it, then please join us on Wednesday’s at 4PM ET for #PrintChat here: http://nurph.com/printchat. While the big picture topic is print and marketing, sales comes up in many forms, and there are amazing connections to be made.

Chat Long and Prosper!

Deborah Corn is the Intergalactic Ambassador to The Printerverse at PrintMediaCentr, a Print Buyerologist™, Integrated Marketer, Industry Speaker and Blogger, Cultivator of the Print Production Professionals Group, the #1 Print Group on LinkedIn, and host of the weekly industry #PrintChat on Twitter. She has more than 25 years experience working in advertising and marketing, and currently works behind the scenes with printers, suppliers and industry organizations helping them to achieve success with their cross media and social media marketing endeavors.