Haiku Society of America
.haiku column
The Haiku Society of America is pleased to host this ongoing column.
.Haiku: a place to share tools available to haiku writers and fellow haiku fans (like how to use Twitter, Facebook and Scribd for building community, self-publishing and marketing). The column will also feature interviews, blog spotlights and occasional multimedia presentations.
Gene Myers
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.haiku column 18
.haiku column number 18 • 4-7-2013
by Gene Myers
Getting creative with #hashtags
As far as getting the conversation going between the #haiku world and the #WorldAtLarge, lately I've been thinking about two things: Twitter audiences and hashtags. At times, I think I know these things well. I am the social media editor for a newspaper, so I spend a lot of time thinking about them.
Yet somehow a young reporter was able to #surprise me the other day with a simple suggestion, he said we should use more #s in our tweets. #SeemsObviousRight?
But what he was hinting at was #important. Not only is the chatter on Twitter still going strong, it has the attention of a younger audience than Facebook. Twitter doesn't go through the periodic (and frequent) backlashes that Facebook does. Each time Facebook changes its format or makes new rules, there's a #protest. Meanwhile, Twitter just keeps rolling along.
Here is the related epiphany. Of course I use hashtags. Typically, this means I type #haiku or #poem at the ends of the poems I tweet. But using more hashtags brings those tweets to different audiences.
"ROIZO Training" favorited my recent tweet of baseball haiku in honor of baseball season. When I tweeted poems I wrote based on the day's news, I gained the reporters who were working on those stories as followers.
So if you wish to open your poems up to a wider dialogue—beyond your fellow poets—I urge you to get creative with your hashtags.
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Is there something you would like to see in a column? Email me at <poetgene@gmail.com>.
• .haiku column number 18 • 4-7-2013 •
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