on hashtags
last year i wanted to livestream tweets at commencement, but by the time i thought about it, the time was getting crunchy and the little research i did do elicited some very expensive options.
so this year, i started early and bugged people often. and we did, in fact, livestream tweets at commencement.
the setup was a little wonky – i had one person typesetting and one person gatekeeping the tweets. (meanwhile, i was out taking pics.) it also was put directly into the video program, so you had to be able to work your way around video editing software.
but it worked! and i was absolutely amazed at the amount of people who used our hashtag that night. we had 260+ unique tweets with the hashtag and 60+ retweets. there were a few instagram uses, but since we couldn’t put photos up, that wasn’t as big of a deal.
it added a fun element, and it made the night go SO quickly, when the handing out of diplomas usually is so long and boring.
i’m planning on this for next year, but it always comes down to if people will still be using twitter at that point. we’ll have to re-evaluate come february or march!