If you are looking for a way to take your tweets
beyond your own following, hashtags
are a great solution. Adding a hashtag to your tweets, broadcasts your
tweet to anyone that is following that particular hashtag.
For the uninitiated, hashtags were developed as a
means to cluster tweets that are similar on Twitter. To initiate a hashtag, all you have to do is
add a pound sign (#) to any word or phrase.
The trick is not to abuse the privilege.
This means that you don’t want to include more than one or two hashtags per
tweet.
It is also a good idea to check to see if the hashtag
you are considering carries any weight.
If no one else is searching for the subject there is no reason to employ
the hashtag. How do you find out if a
hashtag has any merit? The answer to
this question couldn’t be easier. Simply
go to Hashtags.org. On the site you will find lists of the most
popular tags. The site also provides a
handy search box where you can enter your proposed hashtag and not only find
out how many people are using the tag, but you can also see who and when last
tweeted the hashtag.
Used with care, hashtags can provide a helpful hint for other Twitter users who
are interested in the subject of your tweet. Overuse can annoy, confuse or even
frustrate followers to the point that they may choose to stop following you. The
best policy is to use hashtags only to add value to the tweet, rather than barraging
the reader with tags.
Straight From Twitter
Hashtags are
simply keywords preceded by a hash symbol (“#”) that makes them both searchable
and linkable on
Twitter. For example, let’s say you wanted to find out what Twitter users are talking
about right now on the topic of Social Media. You can type the phrase “Social
Media” (minus the quotes) in Twitter’s search field and you’ll get
related
results.
You’ll notice from the above-linked results that the phrase “social media”
is bolded but not linkable.
Now try searching for the hashtag “
#socialmedia”
instead. (Note: hashtags have to be one continuous keyword, with no spaces in
between words — and they are not case sensitive).
This time you’ll find that the hashtag “#socialmedia” is actually a
clickable link. If you click the hashtag in any tweet, you’ll display a live
feed of
every tweet that has that hashtag in it. You can find the most
up to date tweets by clicking the bar that says “x new tweets.”
Twitter describes hashtags as “themes” for your tweets.
In other words, when Twitter users include hashtags in their tweets, they
are deliberately assigning a unique theme to that tweet by virtue of its
linkability to all other tweets containing the same hashtag.
Furthermore, users who include a hashtag in their tweets are assuming that
it will be searched by other users who are interested in the same topic.
This allows your tweets to potentially be seen by millions of users
throughout the world who are searching for a certain hashtag. This is a
powerful tool because it allows your tweets to be seen by people who don’t even
follow you.
Start a Trend
There are even different classifications of hashtags, depending upon their
popularity. For instance, if a hashtag
is used by thousands of users simultaneously, it becomes what Twitter refers to
as a “Trend”.
Trending hashtags have the added benefit of appearing right in the Twitter
Home page and are thus exposed to
hundreds of millions of Twitter
users!
Hashtags Can Also Helping You Find Interesting Tweets
- People use the hashtag symbol
# before relevant keywords in their Tweet to categorize
those Tweets to show more easily in Twitter Search.
- Clicking on a hashtagged word
in any message shows you all other Tweets in that category.
- Hashtags can occur anywhere
in the Tweet.
Using hashtags
- If Tweet with a hashtag on a
public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your
Tweet.
- Don't #spam #with #hashtags.
Don't over-tag a single Tweet. (Best practices
recommend using no more than 1 or 2 hashtags per Tweet.)
- Use hashtags only on Tweets
relevant to the topic.
What you don’t want your tweet to look like is this::
My name is Carl and I’m an #internet #marketing #consultant that
specializes in #internet results.
·
Make hastags relevant - Don’t
talk about cooking and add #socialmedia to the Tweet. If it’s about food,
make it #food. About blogging? Use #blogging. Don’t use frivolous hashtags that
come from left field.
The Last Word on Hashtags
Properly researched and employed, hashtags can help you build followers,
broadcast your message to potentially millions of fellow tweeters and put your
tweets on steroids. Abuse them and
you’ll be considered as nothing more than just another spammer. And that's nothing you want tweeted.
Carl Weiss has been helping clients generate results online since
1995. If you want to see how you stack up online go to
http://access-jax.com or http://jacksonville-video-production.com and
click on the link that reads FREE Web Presence Analysis.