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It’s amazing how a simple networking tool such as Twitter can be used in so many ways to communicate. The Grand Rapids Press, a newspaper crazier about Twitter than most, introduced me to another this summer.
Grand Rapids hosted its 40th annual Festival of the Arts, one of the biggest West Michigan events of the year, in early June. To summarize it in one sentence, several roads are closed off downtown to showcase arts, entertainment, music, activities, food and more for one weekend.
Prior to the event, the entertainment staff, led by editor John Gonzalez, began promoting the use of a hashtag, #festivalgr, for all Twitter conversations involving Festival (the short term for it). They spread the word in the newspaper (see the “on Mlive” refer below), usually attached to all advance stories and refers. They had other Press staffers begin using the tag, as well, to spark the conversation.
The idea behind it was more than just conversation: It was to get people tweeting about Festival from Festival — using mobile phones. Just eat the best grilled pizza you’ve ever bought? Tweet it. Watching a local band put on a great show? Tweet it. Just find a tire swing you want your followers to know about? Tweet it. Using the #festivalgr hashtag, of course.
With the Press heavily promoting #festivalgr as much as possible and several reporters and editors sparking the conversation, other people began joining the act. I attended Festival on a Friday, the first day, and regularly checked #festivalgr on my phone to see what food and sights people were talking about. I saw a couple people recommend a food booth with delicious Mexican, so I tried it. One mentioned a tire swing in a hidden corner of the event area – my roommate and I eventually made our way over there.
It might seem like a gimmick idea at first. But it was surprising to see how many people in the community followed along with #festivalgr. They did the same with the 17th B-93 Birthday Bash, a weekend concert extravaganza in Ionia, Mich., by using #bash17. This hashtag particularly became popular to use among bash-goers when a storm front came through the first night and flooded the parking lots, leaving most cars stranded for an entire week, some with permanent damage. The Press did it one more time with #rothbury when Rothbury Festival came around. One of our music bloggers, Troy Reimink, used the hashtag frequently there, jotting down his thoughts about performances and select quotes he overheard.
These types of conversations don’t occur very much anywhere else on the Internet. They do with Twitter.
That’s why I find the use of these hashtags as a great way to bring the Grand Rapids community together. Although many people at Festival don’t even use Twitter, let alone use it on their phones, there still were a handful of people providing updates on when they were going, who they wanted to see and even giving recommendations on food and sights to see. A year from now, Twitter’s population probably will have grown by hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions. Talk about a great way to chat with other community members you might never meet otherwise!
This type of communication also can help during, say, a hurricane watch or warning, even if the hashtag needs little help in promotion. Kevin McGeever, TampaBay.com editor, sprung the question to me earlier this week. While the tag will create itself through its news impact (people will begin using, say, #adam for Hurricane Adam no matter what), you still could promote its use and get even more people using it to converse about the storm, where it’s going, how to prepare for it, where there are shelters, etc. You could, in this type of emergency situation, get a lot of people to join Twitter just to help out, as well.
I’m sure the Grand Rapids Press is not the first news organization to utilize Twitter and hashtags like this. But I think any outlet that has big events to cover throughout the year (which, really, is all of them) should utilize this. It may not work as well at smaller community newspapers with fewer people, but it can be extremely effective among those who use Twitter.
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Posted by Brian Manzullo at July 26, 2009
Journalism, Social Media