The Creative Brilliance Of Hashtags
January 24, 2010 by BuzzEdition
Filed under Social Media
On a daily basis, people ask me to help them trend a #hashtag topic with them on Twitter. I get requests for everything from someone’s birthday to a sick friend to some local charity or celebration. I tell them constantly a trending topic is just not that easy. I know some think I am blowing them off, but really I am not.
Trending topics are created when the actual topic is something that appeals to and inspires the masses. It all comes back to the “content is king” theory. But there is a brilliance in a simple hashtag trend. Not only is is fun to be a part of the community, but they can also be very powerful to spread a message.
No matter how creative you are and how much you prepare, there is no guarantee a topic will trend. A good opening strategy can help, but without the proper viral appeal, it simply will not go anywhere.
I was a part of a creating a trending topic once. The hashtag was #twitaddicted so you can see it definitely had mass appeal. It was the brainchild of @Twitter_Tips who enlisted me to help. Then @Alyssa_Milano got involved as well and a trending topic was born. It was incredibly fun to finally be a part of one from the start.
I attempted one a few days ago, #Thankful4Following at the request of a couple of friends of mine @irollo and @ChrisTuff over at @22Squared. It was the day before Thanksgiving, so that did add to the appeal. We did pretty well with approximately 47 pages of tweets in search within approximately 8 hours, and it did carry over to the next day. There were lots of versions of it, but the idea did catch on. Our competition for the day was #ShameOnABC (for canceling Adam Lambert’s performance on GMA), and of course all the New Moon and Twilight hashtags.
Thanks to @Scobleizer I found this amazing video by Baratunde Thurston, “There’s a #Hashtag for That.” Without a doubt if you ever want to mastermind a trending hashtag topic, you must watch this. Baratunde is, among other things, a stand-up comedian and the Web Editor for The Onion, so expect to be entertained with one joke after another.
The topics discussed include the beginning of @The_Swine_Flu account, mini grassroots movements created by trending hashtags, and how to inspire interactivity with a trending topic. This speech is sheer brilliance and I promise you can’t stop watching.
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