A couple months ago, I was perusing Twitter on a Thursday night and ran across the #smsportschat, a sports-focused social media chat that takes place every Thursday at 9 PM Eastern time. I immediately jumped in, following a number of participants, and using my own experience in the sports world, began to answer the weekly questions. I learned more and more as I participated in each chat, raising questions of my own and seeing different responses from a variety of participants who are experts in different arenas of the industry.
I also began to get to know the other participants in the chat, from the moderator Tariq, to others who offered to help with my search for a new sports job. It soon became apparent that the Twitter chat was far more than a way to share ideas and answer questions, but an invaluable networking event - in fact, I interviewed for a job with someone that I had interacted with during a #smsportschat.
There are a multitude of different Twitter chats - Front Office Sports has a number of great sports related chats listed - and they have almost become networking events within Twitter - a way for a hashtag to connect users at a designated time so they can find colleagues in their field and learn from them. Although I don't participate in many of them, I've learned that many of the chats are a great way for someone to not only learn about the topic in question, but to interact with the experts speaking on each subject.
My advice is to spend a lot of the chat watching responses and engaging participants on their answers- it's a great way to learn from industry experts while also making yourself known to the participants. The interactions you can have through a Twitter chat are invaluable - You never know who you'll meet and how you'll interact with them!
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