#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!