If you’re on Twitter you may have seen people put a # in front of a word in their post. That’s what’s called a hashtag, and it makes it easy for other people who are interested in a topic to follow all the posts about it. Hashtags are similar to tagging a photo in Flickr… they help other people understand what the tweet is about, as well as applications that try to help make sense of the overall Twitter stream. How can you use Twitter hashtags for your business?
Find Topics
Hashtags make it easy to search for keywords in your industry to see what topics people are interested in. They also make it easy to follow conversations (and then contribute to those conversations).
Find Trends
Twitter’s Trending Topics, as well as those created by other applications, are often based off of hashtags. Get a feeling for what topics are hot by taking a look at these trending topics. Look for hot topics in your own industry as well.
Backchannel
Ever been to an event and see people typing furiously on their laptop or phone? They may be having conversations on a backchannel — an online conversation happening about the event. Twitter hashtags are one common way that these backchannels happen. Usually events will post the hashtag that they’d like you to use.
Host an Online Chat
I’ve seen many businesses have successful online conversations through Twitter by posting a date and time and a hashtag for people to follow. Hosting an online chat about a topic of interest to your audience and customers, is a great way to connect with people on Twitter.
Hashtags for SEO
Many search engines do index and show Twitter posts in their search results for keywords. Using hashtags may help you show up in those search results (help your tweet show up).
What Not to Do
Don’t overuse hashtags in order to try to get attention. It’s considered spammy and makes your tweets hard to read. Keep it up and people will either ignore you or unfollow you.
Don’t use hashtags that aren’t useful in terms of people understanding the content of your tweet.
Don’t (for the most part) use more than one hashtag per tweet. Two may be ok if they’re used properly. More and you’re getting spammy again.
How do you use Twitter hashtags?
(photo by jeffisageek)