Campus was a-Twitter last week with the Social Media Club's ongoing competition, #hashtagAU.
More than 160 people posted nearly 400 tweets tagged to the contest on its first day, Jan. 31, according to Alex Priest, president and founder of AU’s Social Media Club.
The contest runs through Feb. 14.
The Social Media Club created hashtags for buildings around campus at the beginning, but the club hopes to encourage people to build a broader conversation that will be more free-form and organic as students create their own hashtags, Priest said.
“We’ve created hashtags for different parts of campus, different buildings, different individual things, like the Dav and [Mary Graydon Center] and [the Terrace Dining Room] so that we can start building conversations around individual parts of the campus, whether that’s the shuttle or the Dav or [the School of International Service] or [the Kogod School of Business],” he said.
Any Twitter user can get involved in the competition. Participants must post a tweet featuring the hashtag #smcedu. Any post related to AU is eligible for the contest.
“If it’s something that fits into the AU community as integrally as Chef Geoff’s or Guapos or whatever it might be, of course you can create your own hashtag,” Priest said.
As of Feb. 6, over 225 people posted 1,015 tweets featuring the #smcedu hashtag.
The Social Media Club hopes the competition will encourage participants to start using Twitter to bring the real world online.
“You might talk about getting breakfast in TDR, and that’s fine, but then you might have a friend who sees that and asks you what do they have for breakfast this morning, and then maybe they’ll go over there later,” Priest said. "That kind of conversation wouldn’t be possible without Twitter.” ?The person who uses the #smcedu hashtag the most will win $100 in LivingSocial Deal Bucks.
This is not the only activity the Social Media Club has planned. Along with regular meetings, they will be hosting a panel on LinkedIn on Feb. 16. They will also be hosting the Social Learning Summit April 1-3, a conference on social media and learning.
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