My ritual on Sunday evenings is to tap into Mack Collier's Twitter feed to find out what he has planned for that evening's #blogchat. Blogchat is an online Twitter chat forum that features a keynote guest who brings his or her expertise about the world of blogging to an intense audience of hundreds of Tweeters and bloggers.

Mack's invitation to #blogchat Sunday, February 21, 2010 read:

@MackCollier: Want to discuss corporate blogging? Dell's Chief Blogger @lionelatdell joins #blogchat tomorrow nite at 8pm CT! 

Corporate blogging with Lionel Menchaca, chief blogger at Dell? Oh, yeah, I'm in. I'm sure you've seen pictures on television and in the movies of celebrities being mobbed by the press - manic reporters shouting out their questions hoping theirs will be one that gets answered. Blogchat is like that, minus the body press. I dove in along with more than 200 other bloggers firing questions to @lionelatdell. He responded.

The first question I tweeted was this:

@LionelatDell If I gotta start a corporate blog tomorrow/ No time to learn. What are the 3 bottom-line things to know? #blogchat

Lionel's reply:

@zkellyq 3 bottom line things for a corp blog: 1) know ur scope and objective 2) know the audience ur wanting to connect with... #blogchat

@zkellyq and 3) Be ready to deal with the negatives head on...Very important. It's what I mean when I say blog the right way. #blogchat

2nd Question:

@LionelatDell If u were to found a start-up, would u set up a blog for ur new co? Why, why not? #blogchat

Lionel's reply:

@zkellyq If I were a startup, w to start a blog or not would depend on what we did, but yeah, starting a blog probably makes sense #blogchat

Not only did Lionel answer my direct questions, his responses to other participants answered questions that were also on my mind. Throughout #blogchat, he found a way to respond to his audience and also tell the story of how Michael Dell set the directive for a corporate blog. But, before the first word was ever keyed into a post, months were spent listening:

@LionelatDell That listening period in April 2006 became the foundation for our SM strategy. We launched the blog 4 months later. #blogchat

When asked "Why is Dell blogging?" He responded by saying "to educate and serve are my main goals."

The #blogchat complete transcript includes over 2,000 tweets from 273 participants and I'm sure there were even more who were listening. 

Photo credit:  Treepie and Barbet by Nidhin G Poothully

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Z. Kelly Queijo is the founder of college visit planning site SmartCollegeVisit and a frequent contributor to Handshake 2.0. You're invited to follow SmartCollegeVisit on Twitter, @collegevisit.