#tag | Spiderworking.com's Social Networking blog

March 24, 2010

Your Twitter Questions Answered – How To Define Hashtags

A big thank you to everyone who entered our Twitter competition. The winner of the €50 Spiderworking.com voucher was @OscarBearGrylls.

We will be answering all the questions we were asked over the next few of weeks but here’s two for starters:

Our first question comes from @Madeline from Life Love and Everything.

@Spiderworking How do you know if an event has a twittertag and what that twittertag is?

Twitter tags or hashtags are very organic, some spring up spontaneously, some are created with a specific purpose in mind. Some take off, some trend then die quickly and some never get beyond a few tweets.

Twitter users watching the recent BBC documentary series ‘The Virtual Revolution’ were delighted to see the hashtag for the series appearing at the opening of the show, it was the talk of twitter for most of the programme. Sadly twitter tags are not always as easy to identify. Some events can attract more than one #tag as the recent battle to establish a tag for ‘BBC Question Time’. Both #bbcquestiontime and #bbcqt were being adopted by viewers with most finally settling on #bbcqt, probably because it’s shortness allowed more comment. Although, as far as I can see, the BBC did not create this tag, they have actively adopted it even advertising it on the ‘Qustion Time’ site.

Conferences and events tend to invent their own tags and will often list them on their websites. Some display a twitterfeed screen at the event including the tag. Obviously if you aren’t at the event and they haven’t indicated the tag on their website, it is harder to discover what it is. In this case, searching the twitterfeeds of tweeps you know are attending could help.

There are a few #tag directories, Hashtags.org being perhaps the best, it allows you to either view current trending hashtags or search one of your choice. The result is a list of tweets containing the tag and a graph, showing the tag’s popularity over time. Another directory; TagDef defines #tags, again you can choose from trending tags or input your own. The site offers you a definition of that tag and a list of tweets using it. The definitions are, like Wikipedia, user generated so it is worth comparing them with the twitter stream to confirm the meaning.

Our second question comes from our winner @OscarBearGrylls who asked:

@spiderworking how many companies have used your services to launch them on twitter?

This is a hard question for me to answer as we offer training to groups as well as setting up accounts for individual users so for now that number will have to remain a pretty vague up to 50. We most recently trained a group of Journalists from ‘The Nationalist’ and are looking forward to reading their tweets in the future.

We’ll be answering more of your Twitter questions next week.

If you like cool social media tools don’t forget to become a fan of Spiderworking.com on Facebook where every Monday we showcase one of our favourite apps.

Tags: Twitter — Tags: #tag, Competition, hash tag, Questions and answers, Social media for business, tools, Twitter —

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November 27, 2009

Helping business survive the aquapocalypse

It is impossible to watch the news at the moment without your heart going out to those effected by the flooding. People loosing their homes and their businesses, devastated by the ‘aquapocalypse’.

Spiderworking.com is delighted to join the scheme initiated by Galway based IT company ‘Kro IT solutions‘ to pledge time and services to a business effected by the flood.

Ruairi from Kro launched the initiative yesterday with on his blog promoting it across social media networks. Using the hashtag #flood2help the cause quickly spread across twitter. People shared the blog link on Facebook and soon the pledges of help started flooding in (excuse the pun). Others started to blog their support and soon the pledged hours started clocking up. At Spiderworking.com we pledged a tailored social media marketing package.

If you have a business and would like to pledge your help leave a comment on Ruairi’s blog, blog about it yourself letting Ruairi know so he can link to you, and spread the word on twitter, facebook and the rest of your social networks.

Tags: Blogging — Tags: #tag, Blogging, cause, Facebook, flood, hash tag, Ireland, social media marketing, Twitter —

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November 9, 2009

Do you speak twitter?

When you’re starting out on twitter the language and codes used can be quite confusing. Twitter in some ways has it’s own language, some of which you can only pick up by being part of it. Some of which is easy to explain. To help get you started here are three of the basics:

@

@ is the symbol that proceeds a username for example @spiderworking. When you are replying to another user or mentioning them in a tweet use the @ before their name to indicate they are a twitter user and to notify them that the comment is directed at them. For example:

”@stephenfry please don’t leave twitter we’d miss you immensely”

”I hope @stephenfry doesn’t leave twitter’

You can see who has been mentioning you by clicking @yourusername on the right hand side of your screen.

RT – Retweet

RT is a ‘ReTweet’ or a copy of a tweet that someone else has posted. It assigns credit to the original poster.

A retweet starts with: RT @(name of user you are copying) and then the tweet. For example:

“RT @hamperlady Wanna shop Irish for Christmas this year? Check out this new site: http://short.ie/42jn9f supporting small Irish business”

You can also ask others to RT something you have posted by adding “please RT” at the end of your message. This can prove to be surprisingly effective.

# hash tag.

A #(hash tag) is the way people mark the subject they are talking about so it is searchable. Although a word doesn’t need a hashtag to be searchable it’s a great way to promote a particular cause or to suggest to others to start using it.

It also means that if you are a searching a word that has more than one meaning you can eliminate the words that are irrelevant. For example if you search for ‘Organic’ you will find a lot of people talking about organic listings on google or organic chemistry. If you search for #organic you will find posts specifically about organic food.

To see how a hash tag works try typing #xfactor into the search box on the right hand side of your twitter page (see below), click the magnifying glass and you will be presented with a list of tweets about the X Factor. This can be good fun when you are watching a television show, following the hash tag and using it yourself can make you feel as if you are watching it with thousands of other people, and virtually… you are!

Hash tags that have been used to promote specific causes include #welovethenhs, #iranelection, #breastcancerawareness. They can also be used to promote something within your industry. I have given you the example of #organic above but find a tag that could be relevant to what you do. eg #christmasgifts, #interiordesign etc.

You can also create your own hashtag if you can’t find one specific to you.

For example Irish online advertising and internet marketing agency Onlineadvertising.ie has been doing some research into the busiest day of the year for online shopping in Ireland. They have christened the day itself Cyber-Sunday. By creating and using a hash tag #cybersunday their report and their phrase has the potential of going viral .

We’ll be back soon with some more examples of how to speak twitter.