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How to (effectively) Host a Facebook Chat

When Facebook rolled out the ability to answer to remarks on Facebook, I wasn’t very impressed. Actually, I thought it was much more likely it would complicate conversations and provide spammers added methods to pollute opinion sections.

But then I changed my tune when I saw the possibility for a fun advertising activity — Facebook Chats! Similar to a Twitter Chat, a FB Chat is a scheduled time for you to, well, “chat” with a group of people about a specific theme on Facebook. With the introduction of the new Facebook reply feature, users could really have conversations in the remarks of the post. Users could respond to comments, Like comments, and allow it to be vastly clear who they were giving an answer to and which point they were addressing.

Shortly after this light bulb went off, we hosted four Facebook Chats – – we wished to get the kinks out before it was shared by us with you – – now we’re ready to explain how you can host your own personal. Settle in to learn how easy it’s to host a Facebook Chat for your business.

[heading type=1]SO… WHAT’S A FACEBOOK CHAT?[/heading]

A Facebook Chat is a assembly of Facebook users to go over a standard theme. For example, during the very first chat we told folks they could ask her anything about content and posted a photograph of our Social Media Manager, and for the remainder of the hour, questions came flooding in. Our social networking specialist was subsequently able to answer using the Facebook answer feature on remarks. Here’s a wireframe of how this looked throughout our promotion of the Chat:

A Facebook Chat is a assembly of Facebook users to go over a standard theme. For example, during the very first chat we told folks they could ask her anything about content and posted a photograph of our Social Media Manager, and for the remainder of the hour, questions came flooding in. Our social networking specialist was subsequently able to answer using the Facebook answer feature on remarks. Here’s a wireframe of how this looked throughout our promotion of the Chat:

[heading type=1]FOUR KEY COMPONENTS NECESSARY FOR AN EFFECTIVE FACEBOOK CHAT[/heading]

Goal: Have you been trying to improve participation on your own personal page? Are you looking to cultivate your Facebook reach? Do you need to help promote a specific campaign you’re running?

Topic: What will folks be discussing in the chat?
Call-to-Action (CTA): Your chat should have an obvious next step.
Tracking Token : If you include any links in your chat, they’ll assist you to gain insight in to the success of your chat should you include a campaignspecific tracking token. This can tell you just how many clients, leads, and visitors were driven as time passes by means of your chat as their first touch, or affecting conversion event. Our monitoring code was the following:
/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook &utm_campaign=facebookchat

[heading type=1]OKAY, LET’S GET TO IT, HERE’S HOW TO (EFFECTIVELY) HOST A FACEBOOK CHAT:[/heading]

1. Select a theme. You’ll clearly need to pick a hot topic your audience cares about.
2. Pick a specialist. Ask some body at your business, or in your network, who has profound knowledge in the selected theme, to be your chat specialist. This individual must manage to quickly react to the questions that emerge. Facebook Chats are live, which means scripted responses don’t fly.
3. Boost the date and time.
4. Create a dedicated web page. These pages should host information relevant to the chat, whether that is only relevant chat information, or an unique content offering you want to give attendees. If you’d like to supply a content offering to help generate leads, you’ll want to create this page a landing page using a form.
5. Build a campaign tracking token. As mentioned previously, use this tracking token each time you encourage the committed landing page so you could track and quantify chat impact on your own complete advertising.
6. Host the chat on a status update. Post about your own chat topic on Facebook at the start of the chat, and ensure it is clear that attendees can simply comment with their questions to the status update it self. Then have your own expert reply to the opinions with the Facebook reply feature.
7. Monitor the dialogue. Ensure some one is available on that chat acting as a more neutral moderator, even if you have an expert answering to questions. There is going to be questions that your specialist may well not have enough time to go to to, or may well not be suited to respond to, so that you can help out by linking to related resources (include that tracking token!) And where potential responding.
8. Measure the impact. Utilize the effort tracking token to have a have a look at the way the chats performed. Still, you can dig in to your Facebook Insights to see how that special post performed compared to your other Facebook posts.

[heading type=1]WHAT WE LEARNED ALL ABOUT HOSTING FACEBOOK CHATS[/heading]

Reacting in real-time ain’t easy. It’s hard to predict what type of questions you’ll hear on the chat, or what people will say. Ensure that your expert is able to handle quickly replying to diverse questions.
Facebook remarks usually do not work in realtime. While you are responding in real time… FB is not.
You might not get to every question. As as you had like to be helpful, may very well be unable to to answer every question. Due to the time it takes to respond to one question, you can miss as you respond questions that emerge.
Others will jump in to help. Fortunately, the entire world is full of brilliant thoughts. You may see some users jump in simply to react to the questions folks are putting forward. Welcome these people! You shouldn’t be afraid to thank them for helping answer, and share your thoughts on their replies, also.

Should you be ready to try a new content format on your own Facebook Page, try a Facebook chat! Feel free to share your learnings after, too. This might be the beginning of something new!