Secrets of Twitter Hashtags (For Those Still Unsure)

Still feeling confused by Twitter Hashtags- those words that start with a # symbol that you keep seeing on Twitter?

Wondering how to start or use a hashtag for your own purposes? Want to find out what a particular hashtag means?

Trying to figure out how to use hashtags for a particular purpose – to share information, to unite around an event perhaps?

Twitter hashtags are a great tool for finding, following and participating in topical discussions relevant to you.  Here I’ve put together a collection of articles with information and advice on using Twitter Hashtags.

There are three sections – How-To Use Hashtags, Tools to help you use them, and examples of ways to use Hashtags.

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Hashtag Tutorials & How-To’s

• Ultimate Guide to Twitter Hashtags
  From Search Engine Journal: Here Ann Smarty provides a thorough guide to hashtags including solid tips and resources for making the most of them.
• An Introduction to Twitter Hashtags
  From Wild Apricot Blog: Nice step-by-step tutorial on hashtags- what they are and how to use them.
• Tweet Your Message to a Larger Audience with Hashtags
  From Twitips: Sherice Jacob (follow her at @sherice) from iElectrify explains what hashtags are and how to use them.
• How to start a Twitter hashtag
  From Contentious: Amy Gahran provides helpful advice on using hashtags including a discussion of the types of situations where she has used hashtags (breaking news, events) along with tips on choosing a hashtag and promoting it.
• HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags for Business
  From Mashable: Josh Caltone provides advice on how to utilize existing hashtags and how to start your own.
• Where To Find A List Of Twitter Hashtags
  From Twitter Tips Central: Where and how to find to find a list of Twitter Hashtags using Hashtags.org.
• HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Twitter #Hashtags
  From Mashable: Short guide from Benn Parr details how to identify, track, use, and organize hashtags in an efficient and useful way.
• Twitter Hashtags – What Are They, How To Create Your Own
  YouTube Video from Internet marketing and Facebook specialist Mari Smith that explains hashtags – for those who prefer video explanation to text.
• Twitter Tips: How And Why To Use Hashtags (#)
  From CIO: Nice overview to help you understand the hows and why of using hashtags.

Hashtag Tools and Resources

• Tools for Monitoring Conversations in Twitter
  From Bub.blicio.us: Discussion of how to use Hashtags.org and Twemes to find relevant topics and join productive conversations on Twitter. Especially important if you are a representative for a company and/or brand seeking solutions for effectively listening to the community in order to help them answer questions or provide them with useful information.
• #hashtags.org
  All Twitter updates that include a valid hashtag are indexed at Hashtags.org.  Here you can search and see trends for that hashtag as well as a list of recent tweets with that hashtag.  This means that you don’t have to be a Twitter user to follow the conversation — it’s visible to anyone.  Hint: you can also see all the tweets for a hashtag by adding the hashtag name at the end of the site’s URL: http://hashtags.org/tag/ for example: http://hashtags.org/tag/followfriday for the #followfriday hashtag.
• What the Hashtag?!
  A wiki-based user-editable encyclopedia for hashtags found on Twitter. They have a bot that actively monitors Twitter for trending hashtags and creates new pages as they grow in popularity. Then it’s up to the users to fill in the details. They offer a bot service that allows you to ask them what a hashtag stands for. Then they send you back a short description plus a link back to the page they’re hosting for the specific hashtag. There are also some Firefox and Greasemonkey tools for use.
• Tagalus
  Ever find yourself looking at Twitter and wondering what all this talk about #motrinmoms means? Searching Flickr and not understanding why someone would tag their photo #ip4?  A real-time dictionary for hashtags, Tagalus lets users define tags so that others can understand what they’re talking about. Other users can vote on definitions and decide which best describes the given tag. You don’t need to log in to browse the tags and definitions, but if you would like to contribute a tag, vote on a definition’s authority, comment, etc. you have to use an OpenID to log in. You can also use Tagulus on Twitter (@tagulus) to get and set definitions by sending one of two commands that @tagalus understands. You can also get a bookmarklet for your browser.  For a nice review of Tagulus see this post from ReadWriteWeb:  What Does that Hashtag Mean? New Service Tells You.
• TweetChat
  TweetChat is a tool that helps you monitor and chat about one topic. Each tweet you make automatically gets a hashtag added for the room you are in – no need to worry about hashtag typos..The room auto-updates with new posts using the hashtag you are following – no need to reload…Good tool for anyone wanting to create or contribute viaTwitter around a specific tagged topic.
• HashTweeps
  Find Twitter users by hash terms
• Twitag
  Twitag is a #tag finder for twitter that helps facilitate and organize the most recent content tagged by users.
• What the Trend
  
  What the Trend helps you find out what’s trending on Twitter and why

Different Ways to Use Hashtags

• The different uses of #hashtag
  From Fresco 2.0: Rundown of the multitude of ways that Twitter hashtags are being used from Events to products to services.
• Use Twitter HashTags To Increase Your WebSite Traffic
  From Internet Home Business Help: Some tips for getting the best use out of your Twitter hashtags to help boost traffic to your website or blog – including keeping your hashtags, memorable, short, and unique.
• Using Hashtags and Twitter to Build Website Traffic
  From SEO, Web Development, Internet Marketing, and Product Reviews: Advice on how to use Twitter hashtags to build traffic and backlinks to your site.
• Hashtag Happy Hours: How Moms Party Down on Twitter
  From Mashable: Jessica Smith fills up in on how some moms online are using Twitter hashtags to convene virtual parties.
• How To Selectively Integrate Your Personal And Corporate Twitter Accounts Using RSS And A Hashtag
  From Corporate Dollar: Nice How To instructions for organization that want to copy selective tweets from many personal Twitter accounts to a single corporate Twitter account.
• Use Hashtags To Grow Your Community
  From FeverBee: Creating a hashtag for your community and creating a community from a hashtag.
• Beyond #FollowFriday: 24 Daily Twitter Memes
  From Mashable:  Brian Wallace offers a rundown of 24 daily Twitter memes to help you meet new Twitterers and discuss common interests from the wildly popular #followfriday to #musicmonday to #thankfulthursday and more
• What Are the Most Effective Ways Nonprofits/Foundations Can Use Twitter #Hashtags?
  From Beth’s Blog: Beth Kanter reviews three good ways nonprofits can use hashtags – events and conferences, knowledge sharing, and for advocacy.
• Twitter Hashtags and Groups « American Pai
  From American Pai:  How to use Twitter Hashtags and channels to filter all the information on Twitter.
• How To Create Successful Chats on Twitter with Hashtags (Video)
  From John Haydon: In this video, John outline the basics of managing a hashtag chat on Twitter.
• Quick Ways to Plant Some Roses in a Hashtag Potty
  From Twitip: Joi Murugavell provides advice on how to use hashtags effectively.

February 4th, 2010

Tags:   hashtags · howto · tutorial · Twitter4 Comments

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