How to create a Twitter hashtag for an event

Twitter is definitely a very important tool for educators in the 21st Century. I have learned SO MUCH from fellow educators via Twitter, and if anyone asks me for my no. 1 website I always say Twitter! 

So, let’s say you want to create a hashtag for an event. This tag will group all the tweets about the same event together. This would then enable people to follow your event quite easily (and I’ll explain how afterwards). 

1. You can just make up your own hashtag for your own event. e.g. #ELEL. Write a message with that hashtag into the place where you compose your tweets. You’ll see it come up in your Twitter feed!

 

2. Notify others that you have this hashtag via Twitter and so your hashtag is borne! Note that you will have to write in it every couple of days or it will disappear and you will have to start from scratch. 

 

3. Every time you want to add a tweet about the event you created, you simply write your tweet as normal but add the hashtag afterwards. 

How to read your list of tweets in that hashtag

I would suggest two things here:

1. Install Tweetdeck on your computer (http://www.tweetdeck.com/).. This will enable you to add as many columns as you like, including your hashtag column.  I do this all the time – work from Tweetdeck instead of working from Twitter. These are all the different columns – you can hav as many or as few as you like.

For more details on using Tweetdeck I have written a comprehensive post about it:
http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2012/03/why-not-install-and-use-tweetdeck-for.html

2. The other application is totally web-based and that is Tweetchat

The best application for following a twitter chat is Tweetchat. (http://tweetchat.com.) What you would do at an event that you are actually tweeting at – open Tweetchat, type in your hashtag and all the hashtags from that event appear. After that you just tweet in this application and you don’t have to add the hashtag each time.

Here is a screenshot of our #edchatsa chat that took place last night. I used Tweetchat to follow the event. http://schoolnetsa.blogspot.com/2012/07/30-days-of-web-tools-day-7-use.html

 

This particular hashtag #edchatsa has now become a means of conversation and passing on information daily. 

Other ways of findng your hashtag

In Google ask for search Twitter.com and it will take you to twitter search. Type in your hashtag and all the tweets will appear. However this won’t enable you to respond unfortunately.

 

 

Well, next time you have an event happening, try to create a Twitter hashtag!