Wendy Meadley's @SocialWendy Blog

 A Little Twitter Hashtag Test with the Obama Transparency Initiative

 

 

By the time everyone gets back from a long Memorial Day Weekend, Twitterholics will be long into more that double the 15 pages of #transparency hashtags since last night when I posted the Sunlight Foundation email passed along to me for social evangelism.  Okay, I know I should be taking a break and relaxing, but in fairness I just finished cribbage pairs and my Dad and I lost 1-2 and now by the fire with the loons in the background (a typical Minnesotan up at the cabin), so, I checked in on my transparency hashtag test. Yes, I know, let it go… again, I am an admitted twitterholic in that I am loving the study of the zeitgeist of it all-not that I spend hours tweeting, actually I have a ten minute (or so) rule a day- truth be told.

Enough said, let me share what I did because I am pretty confident it will interesting to the other twitterholics and emerging twitter types out there.

                                                       Sunlight Foundation the Transparency Watchdogs

 Quick Backstory:

The Obama Administration has a stimulus package that includes LOTS of money for projects in America to get us back on track (okay a simplified version).

Obama and his Change team used social media & marketing as a core component of their overall marketing strategy and now everyone is studying the campaign for its elements of success.

The Obama Administration is requesting input on how to ensure Americans, yes, the citizens of this country want to see what is happening with the spending of these funds. 

In my opinion this is a good thing- that is seeing what is being spend and where it is being spent. 

The Sunlight Foundation is a leading civic organization who has been a great watchdog on Washington surrounding a number of keycivic issues, check out their website to see their work or visit with them at the upcoming National Civic Summit.

Ellen at the Sunlight Foundation sent out an email to her colleagues and it was forwarded to me. 

Let the social fun begin.

 My Next Steps

(This is typically the moment when a prospective client of mine says “huh” or something similar as the true “business conversation” on Twitter still is new to most participants).  

 SocialWendy defines Twitter Conversation Definitions

Twitter (in general) is like being at your local association gathering- when you enter, you put on your nametag- this is your Twitter Handle and it should be your own name (or your business name) so people can find you when they are looking for you in the room.  You can refer to it in any correspondence like this @JoeSmith and let folks know your new phone number and “dial tone”.

 Identify Your Conversation with a Hashtag

It looks like this #transparency and #obama #transparency and #transparency2.0 as it is emerging in the traditional media this weekend.  This is like saying that in a small group at a party- we are talking about the Obam Transparency story  in the news. As you can see,  you may create your own tag to establish a conversation, but others may be doing something similar in a slightly different way, so you have to look external and actively search if you are looking to lead or create a conversation-you will need to watch the dominant industry tweeters to see what they are sharing, and where they are directing their followers. 

 Link to Reference Sites and People Whos are Doing the Work aka Should get the Credit

The Sunlight Foundation is the organization that is mounting the information collection effort, so I want to get as many people to know about their effort and get them to engage in the information sharing. This needs to be one click easy or the response rate will go down and there will be less collective information for them to share with the Obama administration.

 Use a bit.ly

This is where creating your bitly comes in. A bitly is like a tinyurl in that when you copy and paste a long url into the bitly shortening tool, you come out with a shorter url that doesn’ take all your 140 characters on Twitter.  I personally like to customize the bitly with what the clickthrough delivers to the end user so the user experience is a good one.  Additionally, it supports your search tactics. Also, bit.ly offers the ability to track the performance of the link. So, when you are working with clients who are customizing their twitter conversations in business efforts, you have measurable dimensions to share.

 My Test was to Track #transparency & #obama #transparency

My assumption was that the transparency hashtag conversation would be more than double the more defined conversation.  One Day in (approximately) there is only one additional page of the double hashtag and I am 15 pages back in the search on the transparency hashtag.  Clearly more than I anticipate which is a strong demonstration that many people who tweet want to participate in the relevant conversations “at the association event”, but many have only the most basic knowledge. 

My conclusion, for the sake of this blog post, is that we as colleagues need to contiune to share our knowledge about creative and productive ways we are using this emerging  social tool.

Also, check out Information Week’s 5.11.09 Edition as they now term this conversation Transparency2.0, so of course I added that hashtag conversation tonight.

Here’s the bit.ly I created & posted on Twitter to direct people to this blog post http://bit.ly/Maximize_Your_Tweets

SocialWendy