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Six Ways to Hashtag Effectively in a Crisis

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We’ve been talking quite a bit about Twitter in our blog and this week we continue the theme with a look at hashtags during a crisis. What works and how to plan BEFORE the crisis hits, and what does not work.

This post is also partly inspired by the recent work of two of my favorite crisis bloggers, Melissa Agnes and Kim Stephens and how hashtags were used during the Boston Bombings.

Bottom line – major inconsistency. And that means confusion – the opposite of what you want in a crisis.

Kim, writing in the excellent blog, i-disaster 2.0, cites research from Project Hazards Emergency Response and Online Informal Communication (HEROIC). The research done in the wake of the Boston Bombings shows “no indication that a consistent hashtag emerged or trended among official organizations to organize their content into a traceable stream.”

As Melissa says, without consistency, your key stakeholders don’t know “which hashtags to monitor for all updates, information and help requests” and could miss important updates and other key information.

Here are five pointers for using hashtags effectively during a crisis. Basically, you want to ensure that your tweets are planned for ease of retweeting in a crisis. Hashtags need to be:

  1. Compact – 10 characters or less. And remember that if you are linking, the tweet needs to be less 112 characters or less.
  2. Simple and easy to understand, i.e.; #foodsafe
  3. Share with partners, both internal and external, plus key stakeholders BEFORE the crisis hits.
  4. Organic. For example #bnefloods (Brisbane Floods).   Choose hashtags that are easily understood and are straightforward. This is not the time for being witty and clever, although that is inevitable in SocialMediaLand.
  5. Test BEFORE crisis hits. Include Twitter language and hashtags as a separate but integral part of your next desktop or planning exercise. Brainstorm with your crisis team and advisers, and test, test and test so that you can iron out as many bugs as possible in advance.

The implication from the HEROIC report is clear – determine in advance planning or IMMEDIATELY determine best hashtag to use as the crisis unfolds. As Stephens says, agencies that are part of Joint Information Systems (JIS) “should immediately determine which hashtags will be used throughout an event to ensure the broadest possible message distribution”.

In a crisis or disaster, lives are at risk and reputations are on the line. Use these five points to help you plan well, act fast and avoid confusion

The post Six Ways to Hashtag Effectively in a Crisis appeared first on The Media Skills Academy.


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