Saturday 24 March 2012

An update on the Twitter Hashtags

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A few months ago, I started this blog largely to explain the reasons behind the Super League Twitter hashtags. Since then, I've gone on to write a number of blogs although admittedly far more of them have been about the Widnes situation than I would have hoped. Anyway, putting that on the back burner for the time being (we'll see what happens on Sunday...), I thought it would be worthwhile outlining what has since happened with the hashtags.

When we first discussed the use of Twitter hashtags for Rugby League games, it was met with a good amount of scepticism, ranging from friendly criticism like this:

Don't get why we can't all just stick to #rugbyleague but there ya go! (Bilko RLfans)


To more vitrolic criticism like this:

Can't you all just learn about social media? Your hashtags will never trend, we just don't have the numbers to do it! They're too specific to games, not to the sport, which is where the problem comes in. I've been saying it for the last year since this stupid idea came up.


Just stick to #rugbyleague, #superleague or even mention the club names as proper words, you've got way more chance doing it this way than wasting your time with those awful hashtags. (Paul124897 RLFans)



This was to be somewhat expected from Rugby League fans, but hopefully we have changed some of these opinions.

What has happened with the hashtags since?


Positive signs


Naturally, there have been ups and downs, but there have certainly been some huge positives. None more so than the fact that the game specific hashtags have trended on 3 occasions. The first game of the season briefly trended; the Leeds-Warrington game was trending for a long time and last night's Wigan-Warrington game was also trending. This is great news and evidence that the hashtags are creating increased opportunities for the sport to trend nationally. Yesterday's game was up against Sport Relief which was dominating most of the top 10 list, making it all the more impressive. 


Perhaps equally satisfying, is how quickly the hashtags have become accepted during regular games. The tags were originally trialled during two playoff encounters at the end of the year. The first game did well and there were around 400 tweets during the game; the second game had much fewer despite being a Saints-Wigan derby. Tonight's game was the first where I have checked the number of tweets since then and it was over 1,000 during the game. Many of the people tweeting are those that were originally sceptical and openly hostile. This suggests that the second main benefit; that of making the game easier to follow on Twitter, is also working.

The continued driving force behind their use seems to have been some of the clubs and official accounts. After the opening Widnes game, for reasons I will explain later, the use of hashtags fell off somewhat but still some avenues continued to use them. Notable mentions include @WiganWarriorsRL and @thechemics, who both use the hashtags when updating their games. This helps to give credibility to the campaign.

Current issues and moving forward


Some that have followed the campaign will be aware of the frustration that we have had with the official Rugby League bodies. For instance, originally, the campaign was a purely fan driven initiative and it was the fans that got many clubs, players and journalists on board with it. However, the Grand Final tags were thrown into chaos when the official Super League account released its own version just a couple of hours before the final.

A similar event occurred prior to the beginning of this season, when the official account released a set of hashtags for all games, but it was quickly decided that we would adopt their hashtag system rather than continue with our own slightly different version. However, since then the official account has not only stopped releasing the official hashtags but they also don't use them in their own tweets related to the games. This led to a dropping off of their usage and until the Wigan game in which they trending, I suspected the campaign had stalled. This is in direct contrast to how the official accounts in Australia act about it. If the Super League account used them often, it would encourage the other official club accounts to use them and increase their usage.

Obviously, we can't complain when the games are trending but things could be improved still and we could continue to get more people to use them. Currently, in 2 of the 3 games where it has trended, it has quickly dropped off the top 10 list. Many people are still using the #rugbyleague hashtag as a preference but as I explained in the last blog, this has not trended once and is extremely unlikely to trend. By far the best way to get the hashtags trending would be to get Sky involved. They have improved their coverage this year and even started referring to their official Twitter account during shows, but it would help enormously if they referred to the hashtags as well. If we trended more often and for longer, it would give them more exposure.

So, all in all things have gone well and long may they continue to do so. Hopefully, the next time I comment on them, they will be a regular feature on the top 10 trending lists.

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