Twitter Search – How to Use Hashtags With Twitter Now that Google Real-Time Search Affects Your Brand!

Hashtags are a tool that you can use in Twitter to track twits, tweets, and anything ‘twitable’. According to a Twitter wiki, “Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.”[1] They were developed as a means of creating groupings within Twitter.

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Steps

1. In order to track hashtags more effectively, follow @hashtags. This allows them to be tracked more productively.
   • Hashtags is part of Hashtags.org.
   • They can also be tracked without following someone at Twemes.com.
2. Start using hashtags in your tweets, preceding key words. The hashtags should have meaning to you.
   • It can be helpful to do a little research first, to find out if the subject you’re tweeting already has an established hashtag.
   • Also, check Suggestions and Tips and Example Uses below for etiquette and general usage.
3. Finally, track other tweets on the subjects you’re interested in (ie: those containing the appropriate hashtags) by browsing/searching at Hashtags.org or TwitterGroups. You can set it up with RSS feeds as well.
4. Learn about the stats resulting from tagging. You can do this with:
   • Organize and display them through an RSS feed, making them available to everyone, including non-tweeters.
   • Use the developing Twitter search engine.
   • Tags have their own webpage through hashtags.org. For example #followfriday
5. Know that you don’t have to hashtag everything. Hashtag etiquette is still evolving, so let good social manners be your guide. It is a rare “tweet” that deserves a hashtag, so tag only those updates that you feel will add significant value to the conversation. One hashtag is best — two are permissible — but three hashtags seem to be the absolute maximum, and risk raising the ire of the community. Tag sparingly, and with careful discretion.[2]

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Warnings

• Don’t Tweet and Drive.
• Read my Tweet on new Google Real-Time Search

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Sources and Citations

1. ? http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Hashtags
2. ? http://www.wildapricot.com/blogs/newsblog/archive/2008/03/11/an-introduction-to-twitter-hashtags.aspx

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Use Hashtags With Twitter. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Learn How to Unleash the Power of Twitter

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