Blogchat, the Weekly Twitter Chat, Ends After 10 Years

Blogchat, a live Twitter chat focused on blogging, ended its run last week after — years of weekly conversations about the craft.

For years now, I’ve spent a portion of my Sunday nights on Blogchat. Every Sunday night at 9 p.m. Eastern, Twitter users who wanted to talk blogging would join in with their questions or answers on how to blog successfully.

Topics over the years have ranged from everything from which blogging platform you should use to attracting more readers to earning an income in blogging. Over the years, I’ve mentioned the chat and things I’ve learned from it several times.

The last Sunday night of each month was “open mic,” meaning the chat was open to any questions or comments. There were no stupid questions. Everyone was there to help each other solve problems and learn something in the process.

But last Sunday toward the final moments of the hour, Blogchat’s creator and moderator, Mack Collier, the man in this post’s featured image, made a surprise announcement:

“This will be the final #blogchat,” he posted during the chat. “I won’t rule out having a few more in the future, but this will be the last weekly one so thank you all for being here for it!”

Collier is a digital marketing strategist and author of Think Like a Rock Star:How to Create Social Media And Marketing Strategies That Turn Customers Into Fans. Forbes named him one of the Top 25 Social Media Marketers in the world. He works with businesses to help them create brand ambassadors from their most loyal customers.

And he’s been an incredibly nice and helpful member of the blogging community.

Blogchat started in March of 2009, so it lasted an incredible 10 years.

Mack was kind enough to give me the chance to ask a few questions about the chat and what led him to the difficult decision.

Q: What did you hope to accomplish when you started it?

A: #Blogchat was started on a whim as a better way to organize and find responses to a question on Twitter. Back in 2009, it was still very easy to have organic conversations on Twitter, and I often did. But a day or so later, it was almost impossible to go back and find all the great responses and interactions to that conversation. So that’s when I thought to add a hashtag, then we could all search for the hashtag and have all the responses in one place. The hashtag was #blogchat

Q: What did you enjoy most about hosting it each week?

A: Getting to know the people like you who participated. It was also wonderful to know that you had helped create something that helped people. Probably the thing that I was most proud of with #Blogchat was how many universities trusted their classes to attend #Blogchat in order to learn about blogging. That’s a tremendous compliment and responsibility, to be given the opportunity to help college students. I was really proud of that.

Q: What led to the decision to end the regular weekly chat?

A: It was several things. The main thing is I don’t have the time to devote to a weekly chat anymore. Plus, the chat has been going for over 10 years, we’ve pretty much covered all the blogging topics out there, about the only ground left to cover would be breaking news and trends, and there’s not alot of that in blogging. Definitely not enough to provide weekly topics.

Q: What’s the biggest thing you learned from all the interaction?

A: Probably the biggest thing I learned is that every blogger, regardless of their experience level, can teach other bloggers something. If a person starts blogging in 2019, they are experiencing blogging for the first time. I did that in 2005, so they are learning things that are completely different from what I learned 14 years earlier. So they will have different experiences and have a different point of view than I did, so I can learn something from them. We can all teach each other something and one of my key jobs as the moderator of #Blogchat was always to make sure that everyone that joins understands that they have something to offer and share.

Q: You didn’t rule out the possibility of bringing it back for an occasional one-time chat. Do you have any details in mind at this point?

A: I don’t. I’ve been thinking about stopping #Blogchat as a weekly chat for a few months now. At first I was considering scaling back to a biweekly chat, and may still go that route in the future. We’ll see. I honestly love #Blogchat and the people that join the chat, so I really don’t want to close the door on never doing it again.

Years ago, I started my own blog-related Twitter chat called Bloggab. I was adamant at the time — and remain so — that it was never intended to compete with what Mack had created, but rather to simply complement it.

Bloggab lasted for just two years. By the end, as much as I enjoyed it, I was struggling to come up with topics and, to a point, struggling to attract people to attend each week.

The fact that Mack managed to keep his chat going for a decade says a lot about his abilities to bring people together and his passion for teaching and learning.

Twitter won’t quite be the same without Blogchat every Sunday night, but thanks to Mack, we have 10 years worth of memories, tips and tricks that our blogs can continue to benefit from.

Thank you, Mack, for all the hard work that went into Blogchat. And I look forward to the first Blogchat reunion event!