Digital Insights: Hashtags & Free Lunch

Feb. 14, 2011
A crash course in Twitter hashtags and more, so you can follow the action at Pittcon and Interphex.
The Pharmaceutical Manufacturing team will be covering the upcoming Pittcon and Interphex shows by way of social media. What does that mean for you? Several opportunities for free lunch (in addition to real-time show coverage and commentary). We'll be providing insights leading up to the shows, reports from the floor and coverage of presentations and sessions using Twitter, YouTube and our recently created interactive show landing pages.Through our Twitter account, @PharmaMfg, we’ll be:•    Tweeting special news and joining “tweetups”•    Tweeting surprises and prizes (Hint: free lunches, coffee, etc. on us!)•    Providing insights from the show floors•    Sharing highlights from presentations and sessions•    Posting video coverage of the eventsOur landing page will be updated through our Twitter and YouTube posts in real-time, but you can easily set up a Twitter reader on your desktop or smart phone and follow the action via the #pittcon and #interphex hashtags. So what does a hashtag on Twitter mean? Hashtags are a convention for making sure your Tweets reach a wide audience interested in a certain topic. You can create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with the pound or hash (#) symbol.Hashtags were developed as a means to create topic- and event-based communities on Twitter. By preceding your tweets with, for example, #pittcon or #interphex, your posting will be sent out to anyone who is following news about those events on Twitter. It’s the most immediate and comprehensive way to share and receive show information, product highlights, opinions and commentary, and, of course, to get a few offers for coffee or lunch.  So how can you easily follow what's going on from your mobile phone or desktop? TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a browsing platform that allows you to view your Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Foursquare accounts at once, in real-time. It also allows you to easily organize the hashtag groupings you want to follow on Twitter. You can also download TweetDeck mobile on to your iPhone, iPad or Android devices. Once you download TweetDeck you can easily set up your reader to follow #pittcon and #interphex. Hashtag postings will continuously update and will be collected in one easy column.Participate in the conversation #pittcon and #interphex and email us at [email protected] with questions! And don’t forget we will be tweeting contests and prizes throughout the shows, so stay connected with us.
About the Author

Michele Vaccarello Wagner | Senior Digital Editor