Newsroom With A View

(Originally posted on May 3, 2011)
The Lost Remote blog offers a reminder of why it’s a good idea, when you are using Twitter in your coverage of a big and/or ongoing news event, that you have a hashtag and to be sure your audience is aware of it. Also, an example of a use for hashtags I hadn’t seen before:

“Over on ABC News, they displayed a counter of #RoyalWedding mentions on air. But more interestingly, ABC used hashtags as a poll: #RoyalMess vs #RoyalSuccess, with 82% concluding that Kate’s dress was a #RoyalSuccess.”

UPDATE: Maybe it’s a coincidence of timing, but here’s more on the subject from Twitter Media:

“Many news organizations —ABC News, CNN, BBC, ITV, Sky— amongst others —used the royal wedding as an opportunity to launch new Twitter integrations and to experiment with novel reporting approaches.

“Here are some new best practices that have emerged:

“Tracking total Tweets and Tweets per minute about a major story has surfaced as a state-of-the-art news metric (@ABCRoyals’ Tweet tickers). A nod to MTV for first employing this for a pop culture event in their 2010 MTV VMA visualization.

“Hashtags as polls capture the audience’s opinion while also shaping and driving the conversation. (ABC News with #RoyalMess vs #RoyalSuccess and @SkyNews with #GoRoyals vs #NoRoyals.)

“For a shared story, using company-specific hashtags helps drive and identify your own audience’s tweets (#CNNTV, #BBCWedding).”