Twitter: Lists & Chats

All right, Awesome AIers, this is the last Twitter post! Today we're going to talk about the more advanced uses of Twitter--organizing your Twitter friends into lists, and participating in awesome Twitter chats.

Lists are like groups on Facebook, circles on Google+, follows on Blogger . . . you get the idea. They are simply a way to organize, and more efficiently follow, people who "go together". Whether they be your family (on your family list), or authors incognito friends (on the authors incognito list), or any other associated group of people you think up. I, for instance, have a list for the Indelibles (a group of indie authors I belong to), and a list called Writing Ninjas for my ninja friends.

Get to know lists!

•  Sign in to Twitter
• Click on your name to go to your profile page
• On the left hand side you'll see a box like this: 

• Click on Lists
• You will now see all the lists in which you are "listed" (People can add you to their own lists without you knowing--this is a desirable thing. This is how you get connected to people you don't know.)

• You can click on Create List at the top right corner of this box to, well create your very own list!

Creating lists is easy and fun--and it's often super exciting to see who have added YOU to their own list! 

Participate in Chats!

There are several regularly-scheduled chats on Twitter. A Twitter chat is a live event where like-minded people get together and "chat" (140 characters max!). The chats are identified using a specific hashtag.

Remember we talked about hashtags in our first lesson? A hashtag is a way to identify your tweet as belonging to some topic, or in this instance, to a chat. 

 Chats you might like to check out are

• #IndieLitChat ~ Tuesday nights, 9:00 EST This chat is all about self-and-independent-press publishing.
• #YABookChat ~ Wednesday nights, 9:00 EST This chat is primarily for readers and book bloggers to chat about the books they love and books they are anticipating. They also feature one or two authors most nights so it's a great place to get "noticed" and to promote sales of your books.
• #YALitChat ~ Wednesday nights, 9:00 EST This chat is hugely popular and a great way to network with other writers, agents and editors.
• #MGLitChat ~ Thursday nights, 9:00 EST This chat is modeled after #YALitChat but for middle grade writers.
• #LitChat ~ Varied times This chat is meant to help connect readers with authors.
• And many, many more. Check out this (somewhat outdated, but a good starting point) list put together by @inkyelbows HERE.

Now you know what Twitter chats are, you're probably wondering how you can participate in them.

There are two basic ways to join chats:

1. First and foremost, you MUST include #ChatHashtag in every tweet you send (characters included in your 140 message). If you don't include the chat's hashtag, the other participants will not see it. You can tweet using the group's hashtag from your phone or computer, through any app you prefer to use.
2. You can use www.TweetChat to more easily join a fast-moving chat.  As you can see from this pic, you just enter the hashtag for the chat you're joining, sign in and off you go! TweetChat automatically adds the hashtag you entered into each of your tweets.

Let's Celebrate!

To celebrate your graduation from Twitter-phobic to Tweeter Extraordinaire, we're going to have our own Twitter chat next Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m. MST. Use the hashtag #AIChat to join the conversation. In the meantime, join Twitter, do some exploring, and get ready to chat with us! During this live chat, I'll answer lingering questions you might have, and then we'll talk shop! See you there!

Ali Cross is the sensei of the writer's dojo where she holds a black belt in awesome. She lives in Utah with her kickin' husband, two sparring sons, one ninja cat, two sumo dogs and four zen turtles.

She's the author the young adult urban fantasy novel BECOME, and a member of the Author's Incognito Executive Committee.