If you are paying even the slightest bit of attention to the conversation inside of Twitter then you’ll notice that groups of people often include a # followed by a common group of characters in their tweets. Example #swineflu. So what’s the story with these? The Twitter Fan Wiki defines hashtags as: “Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag. Hashtags were developed as a means to create ”groupings” on Twitter, without having to change the basic service.” Anyone can create a hashtag. Here are the simple steps.
- Follow @hashtags on Twitter. They will follow you back automatically, and your hashtags will be tracked.
- Search what hashtags are in use at http://search.twitter.com
- Establish what you want your hashtag to be. I’ve created one for FreeSocialMediaHelp.com #FSMH
- Start using it in your tweets. Notify your user base or community of the hashtag.
- Regularly browse Hashtags.org or TwitterGroups to see who is tweeting your hashtag.
Best practices for Hashtags:
- Conferences, events or meetings #barcampblock
- Brands or products #microsoftoffice
- When you post a quote. #quote
How about creating a hashtag for your brand or product or service? Feel free to post your hashtags here! I’ll be happy to RT any of my readers tweets where appropriate. Where did hashtags originate? Hashtags were popularized during the San Diego forest fires in 2007 when Nate Ritter used the hashtag “#sandiegofire” to identify his updates related to the disaster. No one can say Twitter is useless now!
