One of the features of Twitter that probably drives people nuts is the #hashtag. You're reading a tweet from a friend or a source and suddenly you come across this strange thing that starts with a number symbol but unfortunately doesn't have any after it. I can understand the plight. After all, you are not alone. With hashtags becoming ever so popular these days, this confusion prevails even more and it’s not possible to circumvent this problem. So if you are one of those who find hashtags things that have fallen from the sky, then read on.
A Hashtag, is nothing but a topic with a hash symbol (”#”) at the start to identify it. An example is #followfriday which helps spread information on Twitter while also helping to organize it.
The hashtag is a favourite tool of conferences and event organizers, it’s also a way for Twitter users to organize themselves. Imagine there is an upcoming concert in your locality. The organizers would love to reach out to contribute in all ways possible. So what would it do? It would invite people to discuss ways to make the event a grand success. In this way people would refer to the topic and suggest means to get the job done. If everyone agrees to append a certain hashtag to tweets about a topic, it becomes easier for people to find that topic in search, and the higher the likelihood that the topic will appear in Twitter’s Trending Topics.
Below are ways to identify, track, and use hashtags in an efficient and useful way.
Identifying Hashtags:
Identifying hashtags is sometimes really a headache. It’s something like a newbie introduced to the world of chat lingo. In Twitter too, people including veterans come across hashtags that don’t fail to baffle. Eg: #sxsw: It stands for South by SouthWest – a festival including music, media and interactivity.
So does this problem have a remedy? Luckily, it does. There a few great tools for assistance:
What the Trend?: This useful service makes it really easy to learn about trending hashtags. When something starts trending, What the Trend? provides a quick summary on what’s going on.
Twubs: Twubs, uses a wiki system to help disseminate information on a hashtag. It aggregates tweets and imports pictures to help throw light on the topics being discussed.
Hashtags.org: While this may not be the best at helping you understand the meaning behind a tag, it is good at showing you its trends and usage over a period of time and recent tweets.
Tagalus: Tagalus in simple words is a dictionary for hashtags. It’s very easy to find information on thousands of hashtags as defined by other users. Here you can also define a hashtag by tweeting tagalus.
Tracking Hashtags:
If you want to track tweets from a hashtag in real-time, you could use tools like Monitter and Twitterfall. For popular ones, Hashtags.org provides graphs and hour-by-hour information. For less popular one’s, you could try setting up a Twilert to get a daily email of the use of a specific hashtag.
Using hashtags
One golden of using hashtags is not to overuse them. If every one of your tweets IS a hashtag, you dilute the usefulness of them and it would also seem spammy.
Another important rule: define your hashtag. Most people won’t actually know what your hashtag means, so by giving a quick explanation you're making it very apparent what it’s about.
Finally, if you’re looking to create a hashtag, make sure that it adds value for yourself and your followers. The best way to utilize them is when you need to organize information like conferences, major events, and even reminders.
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