Join Our Mobile Commerce Twitter Chat

If you leave the house in the morning and don’t have a smartphone on your person, you’re in a rapidly diminishing minority. The red-hot mobile market is the force behind the latest technology mega trend — mobile commerce. Internet-connected mobile devices let us buy just about anything from just about anywhere, and many industry experts predict that mobile commerce will soon eclipse that other retailing game-changer, ecommerce.


We’ve posted great articles on mobile commerce, including Laurie McCabe’s What is Mobile Commerce, and Why Should You Care and Jennifer L. Schiff’s Is Small Business Ready for Mobile Commerce? But we wanted to do more than just explain this top small business trend and how it will affect your business. We want to know what you’re thinking.


Twitter Chat: Your Mobile Commerce Questions Answered


Are you curious to learn more about mobile commerce and how to implement it in your business so that you can stay competitive? We’re hosting a Twitter Chat on Wednesday, April 20 at 2 pm ET for 30 minutes or so. Come join the discussion, tell us what’s standing between you and mobile commerce on your website, and ask our panelists anything related to mobile commerce.







How to ask a question in a Twitter chat; small business; mobile commerce
Figure 1: Add the #SBCChat hashtag in your tweets to comment during our mobile commerce Twitter chat.
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Here’s the list of our panelists and their Twitter names:



How to Twitter Chat


If you’ve never participated in a Twitter chat before, don’t sweat it; we’ve got you covered. Read through these tips, and you’ll know everything you need to join the discussion. The first thing you need to do is sign up for a Twitter account if you don’t already have one.


Next up, you need to find the chat. People use a hashtag — # — followed by a topic-specific word or phrase to organize Twitter topics. By using a hashtag, you can broadcast your tweet to the right audience, in this case everyone monitoring the mobile commerce chat. The hashtag for our Twitter chat is #SBCChat. You need to type that hashtag in front of your tweets to make sure everyone in the mobile commerce chat can see them.


Now it’s time to choose a Twitter tool to make it easy for you to follow along (again, if you don’t already have one that you like). While you can use the main page on your Twitter account, using one of these tools will make it easier for you to follow along without having to read a bunch of unrelated tweets flying by.







How to ask a specific person a question in a Twitter chat; small business; mobile commerce
Figure 2: To ask a specific person a question, include the #SBCChat hashtag and the person’s Twitter name, which follows the @ sign. In this example, we direct a question to @lauriemccabe.
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Whichever tool you choose, be sure to create an account before the chat begins (at 2 pm ET on April 20).


How to Ask a Question in a Twitter Chat


When you want to ask a general question during the chat, all you need to do is include the #SBCChat hashtag somewhere in the tweet (see Figure 1). If you want to ask a specific panelist a question, you need to add both the #SBCChat AND the panelist’s Twitter handle. For example, if you want to ask Laurie McCabe a question, you’d add @lauriemccabe to your tweet (see Figure 2).


Remember, tweets have a 140 character limit — including the hashtags and Twitter handles — so be concise and uses abbreviations where possible.


We’re looking forward to talking about mobile commerce with you — so come join the small business mobile commerce discussion.


Lauren Simonds is the managing editor of SmallBusinessComputing.com

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