How to Participate in #DeluxeSMB Chat

What is the #DeluxeSMB tweet chat? It is an interactive discussion on Twitter focused on helping small business owners attract more customers online and maximize their holiday profits.

When is the #DeluxeSMB tweet chat? Our tweet chat will take place Monday, October 22 from 12-1 p.m. EDT.

Who is participating? Melinda Emerson (@SmallBizLady) will moderate a discussion with Jay Bean, founder of OrangeSoda, Inc., a search marketing and optimization firm owned by Deluxe Corporation. Melinda Emerson is one of America’s leading small business experts. She is a seasoned entrepreneur, professional speaker and social media strategist whose mission is to end small business failure.

Why should I participate? The holiday season is a great opportunity for small businesses to attract more customers online and maximize their holiday profits. Jay will provide tips to small business owners to help them get found on the web and help differentiate their product offerings in order to compete with online giants

Two easy options for participating in our #DeluxeSMB tweet chat:

1. Using tweetchat.com: During the designated chat time, we recommend using a Twitter tool like www.TweetChat.com to help you sort out only the tweets with the hashtag for the specific tweet chat you’re participating in. That way you can focus on the particular discussion at hand without getting bombarded with other Twitter noise.

Click: http://tweetchat.com/room/deluxesmb and you’ll see all of the comments from the chat. If you’d like to add your own tweets to the discussion, click “sign in” and enter your Twitter handle and password. After you sign in, it automatically inserts the #DeluxeSMB hashtag into your posts for you.

1. Using Tweetgrid.com: Tweetgrid is another third-party website that makes is easy to follow along with the chat.

Click: http://goo.gl/RYt2O to view our chat. The far left column is where you can see anyone’s comments in the chat, the center column shows the handles for Jay and Melinda. You can use the far right column for your own twitter handle, just put @yourtwitterhandle and hit search. You’ll notice above you username is a #hashtag box, which should say #DeluxeSMB – if it doesn’t, please add it there, so that it adds that tag to each tweet you send. In the center at the top of the page, you will see a box labeled Tweet, and below it one that says user:    and pass:      Fill out the lower two boxes with your twitter handle (without the @ symbol) and password. Putting your password into any program can be a risk, but this program has a good reputation.

To reply to a tweet, hover over it, and hit the left-facing blue arrow, type your information and then hit reply. To RT or retweet something, also hover over the tweet and click the right-facing blue arrow. Tweetgrid will RT something even if it is too long, but if you want to add anything to the comment, you may need to edit the tweet for space.

Things may move pretty fast, so to control the flow of tweets, hit the “stop” button at the top of any of the columns so that you can scroll down, just remember to hit the “search” button to rejoin the active chat.  If you forget you’ll wonder why you are not seeing any new tweets.

Helpful Twitter Terms

• Tweet chat - a live Twitter discussion on a specific topic at a set time. Tweet chats use a pre-determined hashtag to help people follow along with the discussion between a moderator and participants.

• Twitter Handle – A user’s “Twitter handle” is the username they have selected and the accompanying URL, like so: http://twitter.com/username. Melinda Emerson’s twitter handle is @SmallBizChat and Jay Bean will be tweeting from the @DeluxeCorp handle during the tweet chat. You can respond to Melinda or Jay during the tweet chat by sending a message that includes their handle, like so: “@DeluxeCorp Thanks for the great tip to help me optimize my mobile website!”

• At reply (@): The @ symbol is used to call out twitter handles in Tweets, like this: Hello @Twitter! When a twitter handle is preceded by the @ sign, it becomes a link to a Twitter profile.

• Hashtag (#): The # symbol in front of any word creates a hashtag.   #DeluxeSMB is a hashtag. On twitter, hashtags help you track information on a specific topic. Click a link to a hashtag in Twitter and you’ll see an aggregation of all recent posts containing the hashtag. From https://twitter.com/search, you also can put a hashtag topic (ie #DeluxeSMB) in the search box to see a full stream of all the posts made using the hashtag.

Getting Started on Twitter: Visit: http://goo.gl/o0mUy for details on getting started on Twitter. Follow the Twitter handles for @DeluxeCorp and @SmallBizLady for additional tips on helping your small business succeed.

We hope to see you for the #DeluxeSMB tweet chat with Jay Bean (@DeluxeCorp) and Melinda Emerson (@SmallBizLady) on Monday, October 22 at 12 p.m. EDT!

 

 

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