London,
03
February
2014
|
15:00
Europe/London

#lovehackney 2014 - taking part

Live Hackney Tweetathon

Hackney Council is hosting a Tweetathon on 14 February 2014, from 12:01am for 24 hours, to celebrate the contribution of public services to life in the borough. We will be using Twitter to tell the everyday stories of Council staff, NHS staff, teachers, police officers, volunteers, councillors, local business, and everybody else who makes a daily contribution to public life in the borough.

Why are we doing it?

  • To give public and voluntary services across Hackney the chance to showcase what you do 24/7.
  • Because it’s a free and fun way to celebrate the contribution that you all make every day and encourage people to take pride in local services.
  • Because it’s Valentine’s Day and some people won’t be out on a romantic date - they’ll be saving lives, or cleaning streets, or emptying bins or making Hackney safe for our residents.
  • Because we love Hackney.

How can I take part?

By tweeting your stories about your daily work, either directly from your own Twitter account, making sure you use the #lovehackney hashtag (we’ll retweet them for you), or by sending your stories to Hackney Council's Communications Team to be tweeted on the Council’s Twitter feed @hackneycouncil, which has nearly 9,000 followers.

If you work outside the Council, and your organisation is taking part in #lovehackney 2014, they may have made arrangements to tweet all stories via a corporate account, and you should have received internal communications about this. Whichever way it goes out, if it carries the #lovehackney hashtag, it will form part of the event.

What about businesses and members of the public?

Anyone who loves Hackney can join in with #lovehackney. Share your stories and pictures of the things you do in the community to help make Hackney such a special place.

What makes a good Tweet?

Tweets must be no more than 140 characters long, including all spaces and punctuation, so brevity is key, especially when you consider that #lovehackney will take up 12 of those.  If you are not a seasoned Twitter user, you might just want to send us your stories in your own words, and we’ll make them Twitter-friendly for you.  Attaching images is a good way of bringing your story to life.

Tweetathon rules and tips:

  1. All #lovehackney tweets must be sent out between 12:01am and 11:59pm on Friday 14 February
  2. Don’t include any personal information in your stories about the public that you work with.
  3. Keep party politics out of it, especially if you want us to re-tweet your content.
  4. Figures are a great way of showcasing what your service does – eg ‘30 babies delivered in the Homerton Maternity Unit today’, ’40 mums and babies used our walk-in vaccination clinic this morning; ‘20 Valentine’s Day weddings conducted by Hackney registrars.’   
  5. Quirky and funny human interest stories are great and pick up a lot of attention on Twitter as well as showing the difference you make to people’s lives every day.
  6. Animal stories are Twitter gold – especially with cute pictures!