Chatting in the age of Social Media: Twitter Chats

Remember the days of classic instant messager, chat rooms, and AIM? The internet has come far from that with the growth of social media. Facebook has a chat feature as it grew over time and now Twitter is being used as a chat tool. Twitter Chats are not set up like your traditional chat room or even a Facebook chat. It is a matter of hashtags, replies, and trending topics. PR practitioners have turned to Twitter chats as a source of networking and social media communication.


For many, Twitter is the place where you go to check out what your favorite celebrities are up to, find out breaking news, or share with your followers what exactly is on your mind. This alone has advantages for Public Relation professionals by being a place to spread the buzz around, to brand yourself, to just letting people get to know you in a sense.

Turns out Twitter holds many other advantages for PR professionals. It can keep you in the loop with the industry and those in it. How? Twitter allows you to search what people are talking about, which is important for professionals since we always want to know what’s going on. A topic you may have not thought about keeping an eye on is the conversation on Public Relation itself. Searching this topic can lead you to finding professionals or other students to follow, and from there your Twitter horizons are endless. Doing this once a week or spur of the moment, you can find yourself reading transcripts of Twitter “chats” or even get involved.

These “chats” are basically tweeting to a hashtag (#_____), a trending topic, or what some may know as putting # in front of a statement. Doing this at the same time various people at that time creates a chat. For those interested or in the field of communications, two common “chats” on twitter are “#prstudchat” and “#journchat”. Some point during the week everyone interested gathers around their Twitter at the same time, refreshes looking for questions, opinions, and advice from fellow practitioners who are located in all parts of the country. The monitors, who are generally professionals who organize the chat, control the questions that will be asked and the topic for that chat. The “chats” can be on any question relating to topics in PR in that week, a crisis, to progression of the profession. There various professionals on Twitter monitor these “chats” making them available to all professional, those interested in PR, and most importantly students on Twitter.

If you miss a chat, don’t worry. These are still good hashtag to search daily. People on Twitter will add them to their tweets, if it’s related to a topic or if they find it beneficial to those who would be involved in the chat. By doing that, it allows it to come up in search results. So, if you miss the opportunity to get involved or feel overwhelmed just check it out and watch. You’ll like what you find.

Even UFPRSSA got into the action. UF alumni even got the idea of creating a #ufprchat. On March 23 at 9 p.m. current students, alum, and even former staff joined in the discussion on topics in communications today from social media to branding yourself for an hour. A transcript of the highlights from the chat is available http://ufprchat.com/2010/03/31/highlights-from-323-ufprchat/ for all to take a look. With a successful first trial and positive feedback, #ufprchat was created its own Twitter page, username ufprchat, and it plans to return for another go. If you joined in last time, or are looking to join in on the future, you should also check out the Twitter page and take the poll on how often you’d like to see it.

Hope to see you there at the next #ufprchat!