As a regular Twitter user I’ve recently become fascinated by hashtags and thought it might be great if I could share some tips with you on how to use them. A hashtag – a short word or phrase preceded by a hash (#) – is used to create topic-specific ‘groupings’ on Twitter. Adding them to your tweet includes you in a group that has already been created around a subject or event, or you can create one to start your own group. One great benefit of being part of a group is that you can easily monitor what others are saying about your area of interest, opening the door for two-way communication. Hashtagging is also a way to enable your tweets to reach a wider audience than just your own followers.
Popular hashtags often become trending topics on Twitter. For example, trending hashtags this week have been: #riotcleanup #OperationCupOfTea #ImTheTypeOfPerson
I love the #riotcleanup hashtag and the @riotcleanup account that were created by Artist Dan Thompson. After this week’s riots, this heart-warming initiative is helping people to co-ordinate efforts in the English capital and other cities. As of now, the Riot Cleanup account has attracted nearly 90,000 Twitter followers – probably significantly outnumbering the rioters that did the damage. Another initiative, the #catchalooter hashtag, motivates people to send images they took of rioters to a blog to help the Police identify the youngsters involved in plundering shops and flats. This is social media at its finest. My favourite hashtag this week is #photoshoplooter which invites Twitter users to photoshop pictures of UK rioters in a funny or sometimes even embarrassing way.
Successful hashtags can generate hundreds of thousands of tweets and many discussions, but sometimes hashtagging can backfire badly. One example is Vodafone’s latest ‘Thank you’ campaign in Egypt. The idea was to ask Egyptians to send thank you tweets to family and friends, using the hashtag #vodafoneshokran (‘thank you Vodafone’), and then Vodafone would retweet their messages. Unfortunately for Vodafone, people used the hashtag as an opportunity to vent their anger at the network provider for cutting services earlier in the year during the political unrest across the Middle East.
So what does a great hashtag look like and how does it work? Below are some tips in case you’re planning to create one.
- A great hashtag starts a sentence or forms parts of one. It’s a little grammatical cliffhanger – reading it, you can’t help but fill in the blank yourself. Think of #HaveUEver.
- Don’t go broad, go specific. Your first instinct might be to go really broad in order to reach as many users as possible. But if you want users to engage you want to trigger people’s memories and imaginations, for example #WhenIWasYoung.
- Keep it simple. Hashtags are frequently overused, and added to all proper nouns in a tweet which makes them nearly unreadable. Conversely, they are often not used when they would be helpful for expanding the reach of a tweet or adding additional context.
- Target your tweets. Getting a hashtag in front of the right audience is more important than getting it in front of a big audience.
- Monitor. There are a number of useful tweet tracking tools that can help you monitor what others are saying. Topsy, What The Trend and Hashtags.org give good insights in trending topics too.
Great post Paula – one of those things I thought I knew about but have since realised I really didn’t! Thanks for clearing it all up. I’ll be keeping my eye out for your next blog.