Does using the #MRX tag limit the conversation?

Most market researchers (IMO) who use Twitter do so with the #MRX tag, with the #NewMR, #ESOMAR and #AMSRS tags a little way behind. Indeed Vaughan Mordecai has recently posted an interesting analysis of #MRX contributor and content – and Jeffrey Henning Tweets a weekly list of top #MRX links and posts a biweekly blog on GreenBook about the top ten.

But, is all of this just creating a cozy world where a few thousand market researchers tweet to each other, and nobody else really contributes, reads, are even cares? The quickest way to get recognition amongst market researchers is to use the #MRX tag, so it becomes the default, and in doing so, perhaps, it becomes a fence or boundary of our own making?

Time add new links to the wider world?
Other leading #MRX figures, such as Tom Ewing and Reg Baker have written about what happens if you ignore the #MRX audience, your figures quickly decline. But perhaps the key is to be adding more dimensions to what we do, and for those dimensions to have an external focus?

By external focus, I mean using cues and clues that other people are likely to be looking for. Who outside the market researcher Twitterati would be looking for #MRX or #NewMR – even if they were looking for market research related material?

Options we might want to consider, when talking about the right subjects are:

• #ROI
• #Insights
• #Retail
• #B2B
• #Mobile (we do sometimes use #MMR – mobile market research, but that does not really ‘reach out’ to the non-cognoscenti)
• #BigData
• #Surveys

What do you think? Is there any potential in widening the hashtags we in the #MRX chatterati use? Or, would we still be talking to the same few people?

What tags would you suggest?