Before Organizing a Tweet Chat...

Some of my Twitter Followers may have noticed I posted several Tweets over the past couple of days promoting #beyondcomments, a Tweet Chat I created for bloggers to discuss issues with blog commenting based on my post on the subject. I wanted to read experiences bloggers have had commenting on others' blogs and responding to comments on their own blogs. I personally have gotten more traffic from doing this, networking with likeminded bloggers, than any of my other Twitter activities.

But the chat failed. See for yourself. Type #beyondcomments into the search field on Twitter to see me talking to myself.

I think it failed for a number of reasons:

1. I didn't make sure that people were interested in chatting about the topic.

2. I only gave two days' notice of the chat because I decided to have on one impulse and didn't research how much time I should take to promote it. I'm passionate about the importance of blog commenting and I want to know about other bloggers' experiences with it.

3. The Twitter bug that delayed my chat to today rendered the Retweets for last night's chat useless.

4. I didn't research appropriate times to have such a chat. A great #blogchat on a similar topic coincidentally took place last night and there were at least two other popular chats that took place tonight during the #beyondcomments chat I scheduled.

5. I didn't promote the chat as a one time thing, which is what I intended. Today I learned that one time Tweet Chats are actually called Twitter parties. I knew that Tweet chats usually occur once a week with the same hashtag and have participated in many different ones multiple times, but it didn't occur to me to make the distinction. I should have, though. The "one time" or "limited time only" thing works great for Disney home entertainment releases and it could have worked for #beyondcomments

Lessons learned! Impulsivity doesn't bode well in social media. I am humbled....