GAME ON OR OFF? The importance of hashtags ...

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Created on Saturday, 16 March 2013 11:26

Last Updated on Wednesday, 10 September 2025 12:27

Published on Friday, 15 March 2013 11:26

It's another wet horrible morning with rain sweeping in over the region and inducing a bout of seasonal sneezing at SWSN HQ.

Heavy overnight downpours and further rain has produced a shower of sporting postponements and a positive plethora of tweeting frenzy...

From my point of view at SWSN HQ this is all top up-to-the-minute information, well worth telling more than your mates at the club about ... but when you cover a region as large as ours it needs an easy reference source.

As a media officer I identified that twitter was a top communication resource for teams playing in the men's regional Hockey League, from Penzance to Pontypridd.

I also realised from an early stage that a league that reaches across South West England and South Wales needed a simple hashtag so #swhockey was born.

The SW prefix could stand for South Wales AND South West England.

The rest is history, I realised that hashtags for sports prefixed with SW would catch-on in South Wales and South West England so #swfootball #swrugby #swcricket #swgolf #swhockey #swnetball #swkorfball #swhandball and so on were soon adopted as our SWSN footprint.

On a day like today those hashtags can prove invaluable as I try and update the fixtures lists. @swsportsnews now has 4,000-plus followers on twitter and I try my utmost to stay in touch with more than 500 regional sports teams who track us ...

If clubs could add #swfootball or #swrugby to their news about postponements they dont have to name check @swsportsnews (which takes up a heaving great 13 characters of the 140 limit) instead they can take 10 or seven!

In summer I would ask that cricket clubs adhere to the #swcricket tag for match news or postponements - especially if it rains like it did last summer! #notcricket

Again I can only ask that you please pass this on to your club tweeter ... if you want your club's up-to-date information, especially about fixtures, to appear on our fixtures pages then adding the #sw prefix to your club's sports tweet makes it easy to source on the dedicated twitter timelines already up and running.

The importance of the hashtag.

SWSN and twitter are FREE resources to further promote your #sw sports clubs and ensure your club stays ahead of the game.

• footnote for new followers there is no "i" in the one-man South West Sports News team, which relies heavily on your input to remain an interactive regional sports hub... we believe #teamwork works so it's #TeamSWSN all the way... 

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