The last few months, I’ve participated in my fair share of Twitter chats–Journchat, HealthSocMed, and my new faves Mack Collier’s BlogChat on Sunday nights at 8 pm and Bryan Person and Sonny Gill’s community chat Friday’s at noon. They’ve been invaluable as opportunities to meet and converse with PR and communications folks with common interests–and to share best practices.

It’s like appointment television for Twitter.

But, with so many chats out there now, it’s surprising to me that there’s not one that opens up the discussion about social media behind the firewall (at least to my knowledge). That is, a conversation about using social media internally with employee audiences. 

So, starting next Wednesday at noon CST, I’m starting #behindthefirewall–a chat about the challenges, opportunities and best practices of communicating with employee audiences using new media tools. 

I’m not going to go this alone either. I’ve asked my friend, and Twin Cities Social Media Breakfast founder, Rick Mahn to join me. We’ll co-moderate this conversation each week and delve into topics like:

* When is it right for your executive team/CEO to blog internally? How do you coach them through that process?

* How do you build momentum/engagement internally using new media tools?

* What are some of the change management best practices that will help you transform your culture–after all, it’s about the culture/people, not the tools, right?

* Using social networks internally to build employee pride and trust

This is just a sampling of the topics we’ll cover. More importantly, I want *you* to tell me what you want to discuss. After all, this will be a community conversation.

I know there’s a number of you out there that work in the employee communications space–even if it is for just a fraction of your job. I hope you’ll join Rick and I next Wednesday.

In the meantime, what topics would you like to see covered in the first discussion?