Corporate reputation management, identity management and social networking on Twitter with public relations pro Sarah Evans, who established #journchat, a popular, weekly, three-hour chat that occurs on Twitter every Monday at 6pm Pacific Time – 8pm Eastern Time between journalists, bloggers and PR professionals.

To participate in #journchat on Twitter, all you have to do is follow the conversation, which Sarah moderates, by monitoring the keyword #journchat in Twitter search or using Twitter apps Tweetdeck, Tweetchat or Tweetgrid. By posting comments with the #journchat keyword, or hashtag as they are known by Twitterers, you can add your remaining 129 characters (140-11 to accommodate the hastag) into the online conversation.

In this interview, Sarah talks about why #journchat took off, the Twitter apps she likes best for moderating her weekly chat on Twitter, best online reputation management practices for tweeting on behalf of brands and how early adopter brands can use micro blogging for corporate reputation management, crisis communications, social media optimization and lift search engine rankings.

1:46 – How an online newsroom from iPressroom can be used to help public relations practitioners generate more news coverage for their clients. How to use iPressroom to distribute press releases, biographies, fact sheets, publicity stills, video, audio, and more, and how to measure downloads and generate activity reports. Plus, how to get free access to iPressroom’s online newsroom SEO wizard. For more information tweet @chrisbechtel or contact cbechtel at ipressroom dot com.

2:49 – Sarah Evans on Twitter apps Tweetchat and Tweetgrid, two online social networking services designed for participating in group discussions on Twitter, which one she likes better and why?

3:42 – Sarah Evans on using Twitter apps for group messaging to block spammers from Twitter chats.

4:15 – Sarah Evans reveals her biggest surprises about moderating her weekly Tweet chat.

5:34 – Sarah Evans on the size of the community she’s built from moderating #journchat weekly.

6:43 – Sarah Evans on how and why #journchat grew so quickly on the Twitter instant messaging platform.

8:02 – Sarah Evans’ top three tips for leveraging social media to launch a successful, recurring online social media PR event.

9:15 – Sarah Evans on the level of support she received through the Twitter social networking platform when she first introduced #journchat, and how it served to validate her social networking event.

10:21 – Sarah Evans on social media strategy considerations for organizational communicators, branded Twitter accounts and personal Twitter accounts.

12:37 – Sarah Evans on best online reputation management practices for disclosing who the organizational communicator(s) behind a branded Twitter account are.

13:48 – Sarah Evans on the risks associated with letting an employee build their personal brand at the expense of a corporate brand. Eric mentions a previous episode in which Toyota revealed their social media strategy for putting their brand first on Twitter, while still acknowledging each employee’s contribution.

15:40 – Sarah Evans on pitching news stories to journalists and other media relations techniques via Twitter.

16:52 – Sarah Evans on her role as a guest writer at Mashable, the social media marketing tactics, social media SEO and social media marketing blog.

17:05 – Sarah Evans discusses Media On Twitter, a free, user-generated contact record database of journalists on Twitter which provides Twitter IDs for reporters and bloggers, much as Vocus PRWeb.

18:42 – Sarah Evans on social media PR strategy and social media engagement.

19:45 – Sarah Evans names the companies she thinks are doing a good job leveraging social media for communications.

21:15 – Sarah Evans on where we’re headed and future growth prospects for social media and online social networking.

22:57 – Sarah Evans gives out her Twitter ID and shares the best way to reach her.

24:04 -- End

Eric Schwartzman (@ericschwartzman) is a new media and social media communications specialist and founder of online newsroom software as a service provider iPressroom (www.ipressroom.com), and creator of the New Media PR Boot Camp, which has been attended by more than a thousand public relations and marketing executives from the private, public, government and nonprofit sectors. In addition to advising clients on best practices for online newsroom design, deployment and management, Schwartzman offers a portfolio of social media training courses to accelerate the acquisition of social media communication skills.