Starting a Twitter Chat

Two days ago, I noticed that tweet by Bonnie Adamson. I tweeted back, we emailed a couple times… and tomorrow night at 9 PM EDT/ 6 PM PDT marks the debut of #kidlitchat on Twitter, with the two of us as cohosts.

I realize that many of you who come here aren’t interested in the world of children’s literature, so I wouldn’t expect to see you there. Still, I thought it would be interesting from a social media perspective to document the process of starting a Twitter chat, along with the obstacles that come up and how we’ve tried to deal with them.

So far, I think we can break the “birth of a chat” down into four issues Bonnie and I needed to deal with to get started:

THE NAME

Coming up with a hashtag and a name for the chat is a bit of a challenge. While “kidlit” is a pretty common term, it’s not universally loved, particularly by those who write for teens/young adults. We toyed with many other hashtags, including kidYAlitchat and variants, but decided to go with #kidlitchat for this first go-round, at least. For now, that’s the name, too.

We have both been stressing in tweets and emails that the chat will cover all areas and age ranges of children’s literature. A discussion of possible hashtags for the chat will, I suspect, be part of the first chat.

THE SCHEDULE

Just like with the poetry chat I organized, finding a time that works for everyone who wants to attend will be impossible. Bonnie and I live on opposite coasts, so finding a time that worked for both of us was already a challenge. Still, we decided to pick a time this week when we could both be there and go with it, just to get us up and running.

We want to gauge interest in the chat, first off, and figure we can switch later (or do multiple chats). Also, we wanted to avoid the wonderful, writerly chats that already exist. For now, we’re Wednesday nights at 9/6… but we’ll see where we end up.

THE FORMAT

The chat will be topic driven with a few, we think, touched on each chat. How many remains to be seen based on experience. We hope to discuss issues of craft as well as dealing with the business side of writing for children. Also, while we are co-hosting, we’re hoping for a chat with many participants sharing their knowledge – there are so many wicked smart folks on Twitter after all.

We plan to introduce “special guests” at future chats, but we also want to see what folks are looking for in a chat like this. It won’t do us much good to say “chat is like this!” if no one wants that type of chat! Again, this will be a topic of conversation tomorrow night.

SPREADING THE WORD

To get the word out, Bonnie and I have both tweeted about the chat and used various children’s literature oriented email lists and sites we belong to get the word out. I also blogged about this at GottaBook. Initial response via RTs and email replies is positive and encouraging.

Already, we have discussed having a “home” for the chat, whether a blog or website, if it continues to develop. Having a spot to send people for needed information – times, dates, transcripts, instructions on participating, rules and guidelines that might develop – seems like a fine idea, indeed.

As you can see, we haven’t fully solved every issue we’ve encountered, nor have we tried. My experience with #poetry chat has shown that if you have an idea people like, the group can work together to make the chat work. So we’ll see what happens, but I think we’re both feeling pretty confident.

In the months ahead, I expect to blog about the progression of the chat to see what lessons are learned, if any, and to see whatever else pops up along the way. And I hope documenting all this will prove interesting… as well as helpful to others who plan to start a chat at some point later down the line.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow night and seeing where this leads. If you’re planning to be chatting, I hope you’ll let me know here or on Twitter….

Tagged as: chat, Twitter