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A Hashtag is a Terrible Thing to Waste

by jaywalk1 on March 16, 2010 in PR, Public Relations, Resource, Resources with 2 Comments

Let’s set the scene.

You’re on twitter – reading, following, tweeting – the usual.

You see someone using a tag that you don’t recognize. Content is not clear either.

You don’t really know this person, so “hey @user…” is not the best choice.

You’re thinking: “What can I do? I know. I’ll search for it!”

Problem is the person never bothered to register their hashtag.

—

Don’t let your tweets or any chat that you host leave people wondering. Register your hashtags for free! There are many services out there, but the site I like to use is  called What the Hashtag?! Described as the “user-editable encyclopedia  for hashtags found on Twitter,” What the Hashtag?! is currently tracking  over 10,000 hashtags for over 3,000 users.For those who are active users,  you know that there are many more tags out there just waiting to be defined.

Know what hashtags are?

For a deeper dive on Twitter and Hashtag use, you can read this post, but for now, let’s stick with the general definition.

Hashtags.org defines them as “ a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to [your message].”

There aren’t any major rules when it comes to using hashtags. Simply throw in the “#” before the message and tweet away.

So why all the fuss? Why What the Hashtag?!

The beauty of What the Hashtag?! is its ability to provide an archive of chats through the transcript option. In these times when search.twitter.com only goes back about seven days, a chat transcript is an extremely useful option. To better explain what I mean, lets look at #smcedu.

#SMCEDU

Social Media Club Education Connection or #smcedu “unites educators/students/professionals to advance social media in higher education.” I first learned of this initiative through the DC Chapter of the Social Media Club #SMCDC and from there connected with the coordinator Yong Lee, but if I had not met Yong, if I just saw the #smcedu hashtag online, a simple search would have brought me to this page giving a rundown on all that is involved with social media education connection. That’s just one situation.

Let’s take to today as a real example. #SMCEDU chats are held on Twitter every Monday from 1230-130PM Eastern. Most Monday’s are free then, but lately, I’ve been jumping between meetings right at that time. That means that I’ve been missing the chat. Thanks to What the Hashtag?!, I have not missed very much. With just a few clicks, you can have a time-stamped transcript of your own.

Earth shattering offering: No. Extremely useful: #YES!

Remember to register your hashtags! Why? Because a hashtag is a terrible thing to waste!


The CBC Needs To Be More Social

by jaywalk1 on September 27, 2009 in Diversity, Resource, Resources, Social Media, Thoughts with 3 Comments

cbc_alc 09If you were out and about in the DC area over the past weekend, I would expect you to know that the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) just hosted their 2009 Annual Legislative Conference, but I wouldn’t expect you to know what happened there.

Why? I don’t think the CBC used social media as much as they could have to promote the conference, the people in attendance, the issues being discussed and the solutions created.

**Full disclosure – I was NOT in attendance at this year’s Annual Legislative Conference. Not because I was boycotting or anything of that nature. Just couldn’t make it. Before I go any further, I would like to say this:

Only a small group of people can attend conferences like these, but to create the change that needs to occur, many more people need to be informed and engaged. Social media can help achieve that goal.

Though I could not attend, I tried my best to catch up on what was discussed, but it was not particularly easy. Honestly, if I wanted to party, I would have had no problem gathering that info on Twitter, but for some reason, the pure content or true substance of the meeting was hard to find.

You have a problem when someone who is actively looking to connect can’t find you. It makes it harder to engage, and you open yourself to the risk of losing the interest of your audience in the process.

I did, however, come across video from some of the panels that took place this weekend. My favorite thus far is the Black Power Panel (relax, it’s way less militant than it sounds.). I like it because it happens to cover an area that I’m particularly interested in, the use of social media among people of color.

CBC logoIt’s a long video (1hr, 40mins), and if you’re not up for watching the whole thing, I would queue it up and then jump to 1:11:40. The panelist speaking touches on some key things related to how people in the communities of color and elected officials are missing out on opportunities because of how they *are* using social media today.

Okay, so I’ve pointed out the social media #FAIL. Now I’d like to give a quick list of my PR Prescriptions on how the CBC could have better utilized social media to connect with people to provide more real time coverage.

* Official Tweeters – There were probably over 100 (maybe 200) people at the conference on twitter using the #CBC hashtag. Some spoke about the panels and live-tweeted. Most, I found spoke about the celebs they saw and the parties they were planning to attend. Fun, but not the best in terms of substance.

Next year, the CBC really should have official designated tweeters operating their own handles sharing the meat of the conversation, utilizing tools like twitpic to share behind the scenes pictures and services like What the Hashtag? to claim, define and share those hashtags.

* Official Bloggers – The key for this is integration. The CBC already produces the ALC Daily, the conference newsletter. This information should definitely be leveraged online, and then, you take what you have and enhance it with tweets from the conference, pictures, video and everything else.

Official bloggers should be announced (promoted essentially), and they should be on the floor, in the panels and at the galas gathering content, creating content and providing more context on happenings in real (or close to real) time.

* Media Partnerships - I won’t try to prescribe how the CBC should play with media partners, but a few that they could partner with come to mind. Here they are:  The Grio, The Afro (I followed their tweets!),  The Root, AOL Black Voices, TV One.

* Create a site to Build on the Discussion – There were GREAT panelists at the conference; many with their own businesses and non-profits really having a positive impact on the world. Conferences like these really are the beginning, and a site that linked to all of the panelists, businesses and other groups making the change spoken about the conference (and a site that documented their progress) would add some real value that people could take back to their communities.

I could go on, but I think the point was made. There were missed opportunities to engage people like me who wanted to be there but could not for one reason or another.

Feel free to respond to any of my thoughts, but here are a few places where I would like input from you:

  • Was the CBC doing something online that I missed?
  • Agree/Disagree with anything said?
  • What else would you suggest for the coming year?

When Social Networks Go Too Far…

by jaywalk1 on September 16, 2009 in Resource, Resources, Social Media, Social Networking with 5 Comments

It all started on twitter…

NishaChittal: Ok, Facebook is really starting to overdo it. RT @danschawbel: NEWS: Voice chat coming to Facebook http://bit.ly/eKOg7

Jaywalk1: @NishaChittal I agree. To get all “theory level,” makes me wonder about our expectations of a social network. Google, sure? FB, ehhh….

Jaywalk1: @NishaChittal Might be interesting topic. Do we expect certain things from certain netwks? what happens when we get more than what we want?

NishaChittal: @Jaywalk1 feature overload is never good. shouldn’t companies specialize in a niche rather than try to be everything to everyone?

 

So Facebook is launching a voice chat system called Vivox. According to Daniel Terdiman of CNET, 

vivox“The service, which is currently in closed beta, will allow Facebook users to have high-fidelity conversations with anyone on their friends list. Each user, however, will have to download Vivox’s plug-in. But once installed, the service works almost seamlessly with Facebook, and is intended for everything from one-to-one chat to large group discussions.”

When I read Nisha’s tweet, I agreed with her. I may be a little old school with my Facebook perspective, but I think I liked it best when it was a smaller, college focused network. It was a great niche (…one I happened to be in when it launched) that made great sense.

When the hail storm of apps pounded my friends’ profiles, the status of my relationship swtiched to “complicated,” and when text chat was launched, I laughed knowing I would never use it (that’s why I have gchat!). Facebook and I have since made up, and we were in a good place until I learned about this Vivox voice chat. 

Due to a fairly busy day (..and my choice to hit the rooftop for sun during lunch), I had most of the dayfacebook_logo to ask myself: Is Facebook going too far? Are they approaching feature overload as Nisha said? 

In an HBS article titled “Understanding Users of Social Networks,” professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski shares his view that “online social networks are most useful when they address real failures in the operation of offline networks.”

As the variety of technology grows in both type and function, so does the number of tools which aim to give you that all-in-one, one-stop-shop solution. Should Facebook serve this role? Do I really want a one-stop-shop social network – phone, email, tweet-like status posts, text chat and now voice chat? 

My answer is yes and no.

No because I don’t really see myself using this to chat with my friends on a 1:1, but yes because of the tremendous ability to connect on the group level. One example where this might work is for group trips.

A group of my friends used Facebook to plan our trip to our high school reunion. We are spread out all over the eastern seaboard, and though we maintained contact with some better than others, we were all still Facebook friends. It made sense to use the network to gather everyone to work out logistics of the trip. No phone numbers needed. No need to track everyone down. We were all connected there.

Chat could be a nice addition here, and with the right strategy, I can also see bold, trendsetting brands benefiting from this as well.

Want that New Job? Step 1 is having a vision.

by jaywalk1 on September 11, 2009 in Professional Development, Resource, Resources, Work with No comments

Job checklistI’ve sat in on several interviews over the last few years, and one thing that always seems to separate the successful candidates from the rest of the pack is having a vision. My thoughts on this are shared on communications veteran Ron Culp’s blog, Culpwrit.

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