Trending Now: #CDNHistory?

Trends.  It’s what’s going on.  It’s what’s in the news – or really – what’s happening on Twitter.  It might be a phrase that seems completely normal or a place name like NYC that you’ll recognize right away.  Or it might be something like #HarmonizersAreEpic.  If anyone can shed light on this for me it would be greatly appreciated.

It is one thing to tweet using a trending hashtag like, for example, #NYC.  It is another to try and anticipate hashtags that may trend in the near future and therefore potentially increase the popularity and visibility of your tweet and ultimately your message.

Here are some examples, and in looking at these tweets that use hashtags, we can evaluate the measurable response and talk about how hashtags help but can also hinder.  And of course, we’ll do all of this while analyzing tweets about history because we all know that we all love the #canucks or the #habs but what about #builtheritage and #cdnarchitecture?

I began this quest by searching #cdnhistory on Twitter.  I made sure to open my search parameters by selecting ‘All Tweets’ and found 14 tweets that used the hashtag in the past 24 hours.  Here’s a pretty screenshot!

Quick analysis: 14 tweets, 7 users, 13 original messages, 1 RT (retweet)

Of the 13 original tweets (by 6 users) I found the following:

Tweet	User	Engagement
Regina's oldest family-owned business to close after 107 years in the decorating biz. http://bit.ly/VMySUe  #yqr #cdnhistory	@MatthewCruchak	None
Canada: A History of Resistance?http://hendersonsjr.blogspot.com/2013/01/canada-history-of-resistance.html … #sjrcanhis#cdnhistory Please blog with our students.	@Henderson204	None
Jan. 17, 1961: @JGDiefenbaker signs Columbia River Treaty with President Dwight D. Eisenhower. #cdnhistory	@theMapleTap	1 RT
@theMapleTap you are making a habit of cutting and pasting our copyrighted CanadaTimeline content; please cease and desist. #cdnhistory	@canadatimeline	None
Happy Birthday Jim Carrey, actor, comedian, born OTD in#canadianhistory in 1962: http://bit.ly/S8bI9Z  #cdnhistory	@canadabirthdays	None
Happy Birthday Jacques Plante, winner of 5 straight Vezina Trophies, born OTD in #canadianhistory in 1929: http://bit.ly/XcBu9B #cdnhistory	@canadabirthdays	None
Happy Birthday Mack Sennett, Keystone Kops kreator, King of Comedy, born OTD in #canadianhistory in 1884: http://bit.ly/XcAG4F #cdnhistory	@canadabirthdays	1 RT
OTD in #canadianhistory: 1979 - Edward Schreyer installed as 22nd Governor General, replacing Jules Léger: http://bit.ly/XcA9Q4  #cdnhistory	@canadatimeline	None
OTD in #canadianhistory: 1957 - Royal Canadian Navy commissions HMCS Bonaventure: http://bit.ly/XcyOsC  #cdnhistory	@canadatimeline	2 RTs
OTD in #cdnhistory: 1839 - Sir John Colborne appointed Governor of British North America: http://bit.ly/XczDSh	@canadatimeline	None
Today's Canadian Birthdays - January 17: http://bit.ly/S88RxM  -#cdnhistory #canadianhistory #cdnbiography	@canadabirthdays	None
This Day in Canadian History - January 17:http://bit.ly/XcyOsC  - #cdnhistory #cdnpoli#histoireducanada #canadianhistory	@canadatimeline	None
#IdleNoMore and the Lessons of History: http://rabble.ca/news/2013/01/idle-no-more-context-history …. #cdnpoli #cdnhistory @ActiveHist	@SeanCarleton	4 RTs, 1 Fave

Some observations.  The feed is dominated by two users: @canadatimeline and @canadabirthdays.  Interestingly enough, it is neither of these two users who ultimately garners the most attention, but it is @SeanCarleton who links his post about the #IdleNoMore movement to #cdnhistory.  So if I were relatively new to Twitter and I wanted to search for users who tweeted about Canadian history, and presuming I knew enough to search with ‘#cdnhistory’ I would have come across these tweets.

They are tweets about Canadian history but they vary widely in interest, to the wider Twitter world and to myself and they get me thinking – if I wanted the ‘world’ to know about some of the birthdays or facts presented above, how would I do it?  What kinds of hashtags might I use?

Example: @canadianbirthdays: Happy Birthday Jim Carrey, actor, comedian, born OTD in#canadianhistory in 1962: http://bit.ly/S8bI9Z  #cdnhistory

This is a great example because it’s a tweet about a Canadian actor/comedian, essentially a celebrity.  This means it should be able to garner more attention than 0 retweets and 0 favourites.  Overall this depends on the end goal of @canadianbirthdays.  If the goal is to simply tell users that, hey, today is Jim Carrey’s birthday – then they’ve succeeded.  If other users want to take advantage of Jim Carrey’s celebrity status and promote another aspect of Canadian History, they can do so, effectively taking things one step further.

Some quick facts about Jim Carrey before even leaving the Google Search Results page.

(Some of his) Movies: Bruce Almighty, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Truman Show, Yes Man and of course, the iconic, Dumb and Dumber

Quick Facts: Born January 17^th, 1962 in Newmarket, Ontario.  He lived in and around Toronto during his early life.

Based on these facts there are few different routes one could go to link one’s content to this celeb’s birthday.  The fact that he shares a birthday with current First Lady Michelle Obama makes it clear that perhaps a link with her could probably propel one’s tweet a bit further, but for now we’re focusing on #cdnhistory and for now she’s probably better linked to #ushistory.

1.     Links could be made with other historical events on January 17^th, 1962 (or other years).

2.     Links could be made with historic places (designated) in Newmarket, or other towns around Toronto where Carrey and his family lived in the 1960s and 1970s.

3.     Links could be made with the history of comedy in Canada.

4.     Links could be made with the history of film in Canada.

5.     If one was willing to dig a bit deeper, they may find information that would help them make a stronger link between Carrey and a historic person, place or event.

This only relates to hashtags if you can then use a hashtag, whether it’s already established or not, to promote your tweet.  Place names, dates, names of people etc. could be helpful but it depends on the coverage you want to get and ultimately the interest that the users show!

Next time: What do history, Justin Beiber and Shark Week have in common?

#TriviaTuesday

Search #TriviaTuesday on Twitter and you may or may not be surprised as to how many organizations and people engage with users through question-answer posts using the #TriviaTuesday hashtag (a phrase to link tweets and stories).  In this blog post, composed on a #WackyWednesday, I want to share some of the history-themed #TriviaTuesday questions and answers to begin to analyze and think about the way that history is presented online, and specifically through social media like Twitter.

 User: @ParksCanada

7 replies to the question, 1 retweet of the question

1 retweet of the answer, 2 ‘favourites’ of the answer

User: @HistoricPlaces

No replies, retweets or activity on the question or answer

Focusing on these two examples, there are a few things that I want to draw out and that will ultimately (I hope) be topics of further conversation and future blog posts right here.  These two examples both originate from within the federal government agency, Parks Canada.  Although these two examples don’t seem to be extraordinary, @ParksCanada was able to garner attention from their wider community and was able to engage other users and not only those who already knew the answer but also followers who were interested enough to investigate the question for themselves.

What I find really interesting is that @ParksCanada didn’t use any additional hashtags or @ mentions (other than of themselves) to potentially attract more attention to the question in the first place.  This of course in comparison to @HistoricPlaces who used two additional hashtags in the answer, citing the names of the two cities involved, and that of the province and then an @ mention of the city itself in the answer.

So perhaps the ‘answer’ here is that quality is better than quantity, and that maximizing user engagement and visibility, is not always best done through (relatively) complex questions, but rather through simple questions that can be easily searched through search engines like Google or on the organization’s own website.

So then, how do users like @ParksCanada and @HistoricPlaces communicate a deeper message than the simple question-answer example from the @ParksCanada user generates?  Do we believe that those who are truly interested in knowing more will actually read an entire webpage or article on the topic?  Interestingly enough, @ParksCanada does not provide a link to any further information in their answer whereas @HistoricPlaces does. 

The advantage I see in this for @HistoricPlaces is that even if no one dares to answer ‘out loud’ in the Twitterverse, they may still click on the link and in this case, are presented with a beautifully edited and presented pdf document from the Government of Nova Scotia website that is only 3 pages, 2 of text/image combination.

This of course, all depends on the end goal.  Was the question posed by @ParksCanada simply a ‘filler’ question for over the holidays?  Was less thought put into this particular question/answer combination than others?  And what is the goal of @HistoricPlaces?  If it is to send users to their own website then they have failed in that the link that is included is to a third-party website, not even one within the larger organization that is Parks Canada.

As a student, I would appreciate the link that I could click on and subsequently learn more  As a bit of a history nerd I am perhaps a little biased in this sense and would like to hear from those of you who are perhaps not as keenly interested in the past or even very well acquainted with how it’s presented online.

I think that my next blog post will look at hashtags more specifically to think about their use in the presentation of history.  I will probably look at hashtags that are used in conjunction with historical fact but that are also trending and at the consequences of this.  I hope this has all made sense and that you’ll come back for more musings in the near future!

Historical Fact vs. Entertainment Value

Have you ever wondered if the historical story told in a Hollywood film or Historica-Dominion Institute Heritage Minute has been exaggerated?  Chances are that it probably has been.  This is something that I, as a presenter and observer, of history through social media, am particularly interested in.  Throughout this blog I hope to explore some examples of the good, the not so good and potentially propose some strategies that will help other ‘Twitterhistorians’ and those like us on other media to tell the stories that we hold near and dear without need or cause for exaggeration simply to gain the interest of the public.

As this blog post is serving as a simple introduction to this ‘enjeux’ I propose to present to you several examples of feeds that I have observed and analyzed in the past, and that I hope to continue working on throughout this course and into the future.  My medium of choice at the moment is Twitter, but as many of these ‘Twitterhistorians’ also rely on other digital resources the chances are that the stories will often take their readers far from the confines of 140 characters.

I am very interested in what I refer to as ‘real-time’ tweeting of historical events.  There are many ‘Twitterhistorians’ who tell historical stories in the present as if the event is occurring at the same time as the other events and stories that are being told on users’ Twitter feeds.  It may sound complicated but once you’ve had a chance to explore some of these feeds I feel like you’ll come to understand the concept and ultimately, the underlying tension that is one of my main concerns and interests.

1.     The first set of users that I want to introduce you to are currently ‘real-time’ tweeting the War of 1812.  Quite popular in this time and area (I write from Ontario) with each event being tweeted about ‘exactly’ 200 years after it happened.

a.     @Warof1812Live

b.     @1813now (was @1812now)

c.      @1812_Real_Time

2.      This particular user is ‘real-time’ tweeting World War II.  This project has been running for over a year now and was my introduction to this idea

a.     @RealTimeWWII

There are other groups who tweet about history using cues like ‘TDIH’ (This Day in History) etc. but it is those who tweet about history as if it is happening in ‘this’ current time that interest me most.  That said, the former group interests me as they often rely on anniversaries and links to historical figures, places and events to cue their messaging – a social media strategy that has its pros and cons.  I’ll also spend some time investigating this and looking at how different groups present the same historical information in different ways and look at user response.

I welcome all comments (hopefully positive!) and constructive criticism as I may some day take this work to another level and hope to have a really solid foundation.  I also realize, especially upon reading your short introductions (of those of you also in the Algonquin course), that not everyone interested in social media strategies is into history so I’d be keen to hear how strategies may differ or align despite different goals.

Cheers,

Rebecca