I said good hashtags don’t need to trend, they just need to create good conversation. It’s enough of a marvel that Twitter and a hashtag can gather a dedicated, focused group into a public conversation from strangers anywhere.
Texas Instruments co-founder Patrick E. Haggerty said in 1963, “It’s a tremendously stimulating thing for each person who has learned that a small group of individuals can change the world if they really want to.”
The keyword in that quote is “small.” Considering how many lives they touched, America’s Second Continental Congress, or the Impressionists, or the Apple Macintosh design team were relatively small groups of people. When we use the popular word “viral,” we all understand how important changes start out microscopically small.
Reading common practice on social media, you would think size is what matters—a large number of followers, quantity of posts over quality, interacting with the biggest, most popular news story.
All of that has little to do with what’s trending.
Like good viral ideas, trending Twitter topics (that aren’t paid advertising) start with a voice. An author starts tweeting after concentrating on a niche for years. A small conversation resonates with the larger audience. A single tweet gets retweeted.
To follow what’s trending on a daily basis means chasing the tail end of other people’s ideas. The small groups and individuals who use social media well don’t always know what’s going viral because they are in the midst of creating their own viruses.
I teach all kinds of students for the communications program at Quinnipiac. I had to tailor the course to engage recent undergrads, veteran journalists, Web designers, and PR majors. Medical students delving into the arts trend regularly take the course too. They can all learn from a different way to think about a hashtag.
It takes the class a few weeks to understand their tweets don’t have to be witty, controversial, or promotional. We’re not trying to be the clever remark of the day; we’re just talking about ideas.
Students in all subjects and niches will cling to “best practices” if they are taught that’s all they need to know. Understand the learning objectives of the course and therefore you understand. Memorize human anatomy and you understand human anatomy. That’s how we’ve thought about education for a long time.
But the Web—and this is my favorite thing about using and teaching it—is no system or algorithm. It is made of algorithms that anyone can update or supersede at any time. It takes our best knowledge and makes it dynamic. Twitter’s creators built and established their platform without the hashtag, but they also made it possible for a single outsider to fundamentally change their rules.
When Chris Messina created the hashtag, he didn’t look to follow Twitter’s rules and he didn’t look to disrupt them either. He just improved Twitter. His best practice was to change everyone else’s best practices.
That’s a good media lesson and a good education lesson. Learn the best practices for the MySpace platform all you want; they are now history lessons.
There is a natural inclination in all of us to find the system and understand the right way, but the Web undermines this with its constant development and interactive voices.
Best practices are only the best we have for the moment. I want my students to develop their own innovative practices and ideas, the kinds that start small conversations in small groups, and don’t trend until it’s time.