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Blog Archive - Mon 6th Jun 2011 - New Cliffhanger Website Poses Twitter Conundrum - Heason Events

New Cliffhanger Website Poses Twitter Conundrum

6th Jun 2011

Hammer Design have done it again! Gone and designed a lovely new website for one of my events again. Last time it was www.shaff.co.uk. This time is is www.cliff-hanger.co.uk.

Check it out. It's lovely. It went live last week so if there are any bugs please drop me a line to tell me.

Hammer are based in Hathersage in the Peak and have a strong ethos rooted in the outdoors. Their office is located in one of the fancy looking buildings by the railway station (if you have ever passed through Hathersage b train you will recognises them - metal and glass structures with semi-circular roofs). It's without doubt one of the best office views I've ever seen which can only rub off in a good way onto the growing team inside (contrast this with an old job of mine working at a steel works in Rotherham where I was 15 metres from the nearest (tinted) window!).

Anyway, aside from being dead chuffed with the new site it's presented a bit of a conundrum. Back in January I employed Lissa Cook to do the PR for ShAFF. She did a grand job, and also dragged me into the Social Media revolution. The Heason Events Facebook Page and Twitter account now have in excess of 750 followers each. Not bad for a few months work. If you've not signed up for either then please do. I try to post stuff on there every day - from Peak District weather reports to event news to entertaining extreme sports videos and blog pieces like this one. So if you are familiar with Twitter you will know what hashtags are. By adding a '#' symbol to the beginning of a word or name when Tweeting, Twitter users can look out for such words, and hear about them as soon as they are tweeted. They also have the effect of highlighting a word, encouraging others to re-Tweet them to their followers. At ShAFF for example we ran a live feed via a projector in the bar showing anybody who tweeted #ShAFF. We put up some signs telling people to 'Tweet #ShAFF if they were having fun, and the response was amazing. Dozens of messages immediately started bouncing around the world giving live chat-style updates on the festival. Suffice to say that we are planning to do the same again at Cliffhanger. However there is a problem. The term Cliffhanger was coined as the event title way before Twitter, or even hashtag, had been invented. If you search for #Cliffhanger now there's a post every few minutes as it is a well used word relating to all manner of things from an end to a tv soap opera to a famous film starring Sly Stalone. As a result we're suggesting to people that they tweet #cliffhangersheffield. Doesn't exactly fly off the keyboard, but it does exactly what it says. So, if you have a Twitter account, tweet #cliffhangersheffield right away and help start the ball rolling :-)