If you’ve been trying to use Twitter to engage with real thought leaders and potential clients and possible future employees, you may have felt like you were going nowhere fast. Even if you post truly engaging content, you may never get a reply, favorite or retweet.

The tricky thing is, Twitter can be largely asynchronous (as opposed to real time, like Skype, WeChat, Kakao Talk, etc) and seem to be topic oriented, rather than relationship oriented (like Facebook), but the best way to get serious engagement going on is to have discussions in real time with people you develop a relationship with about specific topics. This is realized in Twitter Chats.

The mechanics are pretty simple. You follow a hashtag. Engage in the discussion. Reply to the questions posted (usually they’re posted as Q1, Q2, etc and you reply starting with A1, A2, etc). Remember to always include the hashtag. Favorite, retweet and follow with abandon. And there you go.

No, there’s not really a way to prevent people from crashing your hashtag party. Yes, anyone could run a Twitter Chat, if so inclined. But leave such ambitious goals until you’ve tried out a bunch and figured out what they’re all about.

Find a few Twitter Chats, listen and contribute. You’ll learn, you’ll build a reputation, make some friends & contacts, and your Klout score will steadily shoot up. They each last an hour and the time will fly by. People will actually be listening to you. Even if you say dumb things, they’ll likely respond, which is more than you get outside of chats typically.

More info on Twitter Chats:

http://socialfactor.com/9-tips-brands-twitter-chats/

http://www.terralever.com/the-complete-guide-to-twitter-chats/