Sometime in the second half of 2009, a couple of us decided to create a #naturalhair hour on twitter to ask and answer questions regarding… uh, natural hair! Since then, the chat has grown and become a bit difficult to follow for many people. Often, people’s questions would go unnoticed or answered multiple times, making it frustrating to navigate altogether, even for me.
I suggested we try compiling questions in advance so that we could roll them out through the hour. This requires a moderator, and the moderator’s job is just to: a) make sure the questions are compiled before the chat time, b) tweet the questions throughout out the hour at an appropriate pace and c) tweet and retweet answers to the questions.
That’s it. Everyone else (including the moderator) is free to chat it up and answer questions in whichever format they are most comfortable. Only the questions will be streamlined.
I’ll moderate this first go around, just to show and see how it goes. As I tweet the questions, I’ll format them like so:
#Q1 #naturalhair @afrolicious asks, what kind of protective hairstlyes are y’all using this winter?
#Q2 #naturalhair @afrolicious asks, what’s your favorite hair product evar?
And the answers will be directed to each question like so:
#Q1 #naturalhair my hair is always in braids for January and March. Helps to stop breakage and retain length
#Q2 #naturalhair SHEA BUTTER BABY!
This way, I can retweet the answers. Questions will be asked in the order they are recieved and grouped if there are multiples. It’s really much easier than it sounds. I’ve seen this and used this during DCTH. Let me know if you have any concerns or if you would like to moderate future #naturalhair twitter chats.
Here are some tools to help you follow the #naturalhair chats: TweetChat, Tweetgrid and Twubs.