How to Use Hashtags on Every Social Media Network
We talk about hashtags a lot, but we haven’t stepped back to consider
the basics in a while. Hashtags are a way for social media users to
tag their posts with keywords, which in turn make them easier for
social networks to organize and users to search — we all know that.
What Are Hashtags?
A word or phrase preceded by a hash mark (#), used
within a message to identify a keyword or topic of interest and
facilitate a search for it.
It may be pretty surprising to hear, but the first use of a hashtag in social media can actually be traced back to one man. Chris Messina, a former Google employee who worked in developer relations and as a designer on Google+, Tweeted the first ever hashtag. This Tweet took place all the way back in 2007, so it took quite a bit to catch on, but when it did, it did in a big way.
How to Use Hashtags
hash·tag: A word or phrase preceded by a hash mark
(#), used within a message to identify a keyword or topic of interest
and facilitate a search for it.
So whenever a user adds a hashtag to their post, it is immediately
indexed by the social network and searchable by other users. Once
someone clicks on that hashtag, they’ll be brought to a page that
aggregates all of the posts with the same hashtagged keyword in
real-time. Once a keyword picks up enough momentum it becomes known as
“trending.” Trending isn’t simply a matter of becoming the most popular
hashtag on the networks. Each users’ trending topics is different based
on their location and social connections.
It may be pretty surprising to hear, but the first use of a hashtag
in social media can actually be traced back to one man. Chris Messina, a
former Google employee who worked in developer relations and as a
designer on Google+, Tweeted the first ever hashtag. This Tweet took
place all the way back in 2007, so it took quite a bit to catch on, but
when it did, it did in a big way.
Using a hashtag in a social post is as simple as adding the ‘#’ sign
before a single word or phrase without spaces or punctuation (numbers
are okay).
- Don’t string too many words together with a single hashtag.
- If you 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.
- Use hashtags only on tweets relevant to the topic.
Though it’s easy to quickly create and send out a post with a hashtag
in it, there is some basic etiquette when it comes to using them. We’ll
cover some of the advanced ways to use hashtags, but first lets take a
step back and look at what Mediabistro put together
outlining some of the basic rules for creating a tweet with hashtags.
Though it’s easy to create a hashtag, it’s not quite as easy to do it in
a correct or relevant way.
Courtesy by :---->>>>> SproutSocial
