Use Twitter as your chat stream for your live blog or video cast

 Here is something that I've seen recently that is just making the best use of the available tools.  I've been on Webinars with ThinkVitamin and Boagworld and one thing - amongst the many others - that I learned was how they handled their webcast.  

One of the things that really stood out to me was how they used Twitter hash-tags as chat streams for the live broadcast.  For one of the ThinkVitamin conferences I was on, it was a necessity as the chat in the platform they were using failed.  

So, throughout the 4 hour conference as we all listened and learned we followed the hash-tag for the conference and it made the experience even better. 

Here is an an additional advantage to using Twitter hash-tags for your live webcast. You have an easily preserved Twitter archive of the tweets associated with the conference.  So many times people will post great links in those streams that it's good to have them easily accessible afterwards.  It's not a permanent archive, but lasts long enough for one to go back and review as they're watching the slides and listening to the audio of your conference afterwards. 

You can use Twitter hash-tags for just about anything you want to follow.  If you're using a Twitter client like TweetDeck or Hootsuite you can add a column specifically for following those tags.  I kept my #html5conf column open for weeks after the ThinkVitamin conference as there were still great conversations going on there. Now, several months later, the talk has all but disappeared. But it was a great way to follow the conference and it served as a great tool for chat.  

Do you have other creative ways you've used Twitter hash-tags? Share them in the comments below.