Hashtag Basics: When To Use Twitter Hashtags

Posted: October 24, 2012

[caption id="attachment_10948" align="alignright"]© Thomas Pajot - Fotolia.com[/caption]You see it everywhere - the number (or pound) symbol plus a word or short phrase. Now there's a new meaning for the # symbol, known as the hashtag. Here is some interesting background on the hashtag and how and when to use them to engage followers and for marketing.

Nearly every marketer uses Twitter – and the vast majority of us also use hashtags – the letters that follow the pound or number sign (#) in a tweet. But here are five things you might not know about hashtags that could help you boost your Twitter results dramatically.

For example, did you know that Twitter didn’t invent hashtags? Twitter users did. Google employee Chris Messina is credited as the “hashtag Godfather” for an August, 2007 tweet in which he suggested using the pound sign as a way to organize groups on Twitter. His original idea was that like minded people could find and follow each other more easily if they self-identified their interests with hashtags.

Also, hashtags can be used in two different ways – to group tweets into categories, so they’re easier to find, and also to indicate that the person tweeting is adding an ironic comment to the message. Most of the time, people use them to add personality to a tweet, and reach people who might be searching for a particular topic.

For instance, I have a lot of friends in New Zealand, and during a series of earthquakes last year, I found that following the hashtag #NZearthquake gave me real-time information on the situation – and the information kept flowing long after the U.S. media lost interest in an event that happened 10,000 miles away. A lot of entertainment marketers use hashtags to build communities around television programming, celebrities, books or movies – and so do smart brand marketers.

Read entire article Hashtag Basics: When To Use Twitter Hashtags

For more tips on using Hashtags, see https://support.twitter.com/articles/49309-what-are-hashtags-symbols#.

POMA uses these hashtags when tweeting:

POMA Hashtags

#POMAmembers
#POMACP
#POMAConf
#huntfishnews

Trade Show Hashtags

#SHOTShow
#ICAST
#ATAShow

Biz Tip submitted by Tammy Sapp, director of communications for Kalkomey