#NorthEastHour On Twitter Sets The Trend

2 February 2013, 06:00 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

A Twitter hashtag promoting businesses in the North East's grown so much it now trends in the UK every week

#NorthEastHour is the concept of regional networking hours on Twitter.

It was started from a similar idea north of the border in Scotland. 

The hashtag #ScotlandHour was born to allow people who travelled to Scotland tell others about their experiences and make recommendations.  

#Yorkshirehour was then born out of #Scotlandhour in the first part of last year after two businesswomen saw the popularity of tweets using the #Scotlandhour hashtag.

They launched a highly successful weekly networking hour which trended nationally and attracted a lot of attention and accolades.

In the summer of 2012, Helen Armstrong from Northumberland noticed a series of tweets by two or three accounts she followed talking about #Northeasthour.

She then became involved in promoting tweets from businesses to help get #NorthEastHour going.

Within two or three weeks, the hour had really taken off and new people were joining in all the time, with Helen being asked questions all the time about how it worked and what it was.

Since then she's become known for 'creating' #NorthEastHour - although this isn't something she would have people believe.

Now Helen runs, promotes and manages the networking hour - mostly through her account @NorthEastHour which now has more than 4,000 followers

The networking events take place twice weekly on Twitter - on Mondays 8pm - 9pm and on Tuesdays 2pm-3pm

Businesses from the very north of our region in Berwick right down to the south where we meet North Yorkshire tweeting about their services and products.

Helen's been chatting to Capital's Anna Harding about what #NorthEastHour is and why she thinks it's so popular