Anatomy of a Hashtag: #NHLTrade

Anyone who watched the recent Vancouver Olympic games (a lot of you) and desired to chat about them with your Twitter friends, you might have used #van2010, the prevailing hagtag for the 2010 Winter Olympics. If you were watching the gold medal hockey game between the US and Canada, again, a lot of you, you also might have used one of these trending topics: #Olympics #Vancouver, #TeamUSA, #TeamCanada, #USA, #Canada, #Miller, #Luongo #hockey, or even my personal favorite Vancouver-inspired Twitter creation, #DoYouBelieveInMillercles.

Overall, the discussion was dominated with Olympics-centric chatter so it was not much of a challenge to find Twitter conversation about the Olympics or the hockey game. However, what if you want to streamline conversation around a less global topic than the Olympic games?

Now that there are an increasing number of people throwing a tag on the end of their tweets, it becomes more of a challenge to use hashtags for their original purpose. Overuse has lead to dilution.

Solution: if you want to get a hashtag going around an event but want it to it to grow organically, rather than “gaming the system,” you should think about laying some groundwork first.

As March 3, 2010, otherwise known as NHL Trade Deadline aka “hockey Christmas” approached, we worked with the NHL to get the word out that the official hashtag for the trade deadline would be “NHLTrade.” The immediacy of Twitter has made it the perfect medium for trade rumors to spread like #wildfire and also for journalists, team personnel and fans to break trade news to the community, resulting in an explosion of conversation leading up to and during the trade deadline day.

To seed #NHLTrade as the official hashtag, the NHL started early, using it in Tweets starting on February 12, 2010–the day of the pre-Olympic break roster freeze. Over the course of the two week Olympic break, they posted tweets encouraging the use of use #NHLTrade for all trade deadline related tweets and @ replied fans speculating about the trade deadline. The background of the official @NHL Twitter page also displayed the hashtag and the URL for NHL Tweetmixx over the Olympic break to casually remind fans.

On March 3, @NHL started the trade deadline day with this tweet:

@NHL also tagged all tweets on March 3 with #NHLTrade an encouraged fans to respond with the tag as well

Result:

#NHLTrade trended for the entirety of the trade deadline, and was a top 10 trending topic in Canada  from 9:00 ET until after 5:00 ET. While “NHL trade deadline” also trended throughout the day in the US and Canada, the hashtag allowed fans and anyone else interested in a  streamlined option to track the trade related conversation.

While Santa did not bring any Earth-shattering trades with him for fans on hockey Christmas this year, the gift of NHL Trade Deadline, #NHLTrade and other hockey-related topics throughout the day sitting atop the top trending lists throughout the day were gift enough for those looking to continue the hockey love-fest post USA-Canada gold medal game.