If you’re new to Twitter you may be wondering why lots of words have this symbol in front of them # – known as the Hashtag (or if you’re in the USA the ‘pound’ symbol).
It’s commonly used to group tweets of a particular topic together – so if you click on a #hashtagged word you get a list of all the tweets that have used it. It was useful when we had all that snow at the beginning of the year – anyone wanting to talk about the snow used the #hashtag #uksnow and it made conversation around that topic easier to follow. You’ll also see it used profusely every Friday #FF – a way of recommending people you know, like and trust to your followers.
It’s also really useful if you’re using Twitter for business – here’s 3 examples of how it’s being used:
- Creating a Tweet Chat - The Social CMO hold a tweetchat every Monday night with a special guest using #MMchat – they also post a transcript of the chat afterwards.
- Bring a new twist to offline events – Social Media Examinerexplains 3 ways to use the Twitter hashtag at live events.
- Promoting content, crowdsourcing, monitoring conversation, contests – Ok so number three has four ways – but it’s only one article over at The Next Web.
Do you use the Hashtag in any of these ways? Was it useful? Let me know 