Introducing Social Media Monday!

Happy Monday! Starting today, I'm going to put the 21st-Century Business blog on a schedule. Every Monday, I'll share a short post about one aspect of Social Media. A how-to for folks who don't live and breathe it like I do because, well, they probably have a life (Me? Not so much, really.)

Today's topic: How to participate in a Twitter chat.

1. All week long, you can see folks including things in their tweets that look like this: #custserv, #tchat, #leadershipchat, and of course the ultra-popular #justinbeiberisadreamcake.

2. Okay, I may have made that last one up. But the first 3 are chats I actually recommend.

3. Like I said, they go on all week - these things, called hashtags, are ways for folks with like interests to find each other amid the 170 million tweets zipping around the twittosphere each minute.

4. So the hashtags are typically used all week long, but once a week, usually for an hour each chat, people converge on the hashtag to have an in-depth conversation.

5. If you want to participate, or even just observe, it's as easy as monitoring the hashtag at the time of the chat. These are open forums, so you're automatically invited. Congratulations!

6. Don't forget to tag your tweets with the hashtag if you want the group to pick up what you're saying.

Let's flesh this out with an example. We'll take my favorite chat, #custserv, which is held 9-10 Eastern Time every Tuesday night. The general topic is customer service, but each week we have a specific aspect of service we discuss.

The chat is a remarkable mixture of authors, business leaders, front-line practitioners, and even some people who just care about treating others right. For an hour each week, hundreds of us converge on the hashtag and share important ideas - it's more fun than a barrel of monkeys, and it's open to everyone.

Of course, for chatty-Kathys like me, followers can get a little overwhelmed with all our tweets that hour. that's why I highly recommend you at least send out a disclaimer about heavy activity to your followers before, and probably a few times during, the chat.

Well, clearly this wasn't short, as I'd intended. Was it useful at all? Please let me know - and tune in next Monday, when I share another Social Media Monday tip.