#Smallbizchat Leading on Twitter

After only a modest amount of engagement, it is quite clear that it is worth paying close attention to the #smallbizchat community.

This Twitter hashtag represents a group of people who take part in a weekly interactive talk show for small business owners, held every Wednesday from 8-9 PM EST. The professed target market for this Twitter talk show is “emerging entrepreneurs 25-54 who are less than five years in business”, and the chat topics typically range between “challenges for start-ups and issues that would challenge a business with 20 or fewer employees.”

Qworky certainly falls within this demographic, but the importance of watching #smallbizchat is even more clear in light of the manner in which they engage in online meetings through Twitter. #Smallbizchat’s founder and host, Melinda Emerson aka @SmallBizLady, does a fantastic job of providing resources to explain what a “Twitterchat” is as well as relaying specific directions to take part in the #smallbizchat Twitterchat itself. Such explanations are important given the innovative nature of the Twitter tools they take advantage of, such as Tweetgrid and Tweetchat, which are used to aggregate Tweets to the hashtag while optimizing various streams of communication in an organized fashion. Furthermore, they have a very helpful support team working to facilitate the various person-to-person and many-to-many conversations, including co-host Cathy Larkin (@CathyWebSavvyPR) and virtual assistant Sonia Schenker (@YourJobMyOffice).

The mission of the effort exemplifies the degree to which it is a worthy endeavor as well, as it entails the collaborative focus of helping “small business owners succeed as their own boss by reducing the learning curve as their small businesses start and grow.” Plus, the diversity promoting properties of Twitter are even further leveraged by the diverse constituency of this community, and there are all sorts of important perspectives fostered through this chat that would otherwise be much more difficult to obtain.

Tonight’s edition includes guest Christina Katz aka @thewritermama with the subject “Developing Your Marketing Platform”, and considering the team and resources behind #smallbizchat, it will undoubtedly be another quality event (and then some)!

There are a lot of moving parts that go into coordinating a distributed effort like this, and although we are definitely excited to take part tonight, it’s even better to receive increasing confirmation of the strong leadership that the small business community on Twitter has at its disposal.