Tranter Banter

Hashtags are showing up all over the internet.  You’ll see them on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Vine.  Some folks use them in their blogs.  Hashtags, commonly known as the “#” symbol help keep information organized and easily found.   Rumor has it they will be coming to Facebook soon.

The hashtag was first used by @ChrisMessina on Twitter on August 23, 2007 when he came up with the idea of using the hashtag, or hatch mark, to set up an inner circle of friends or “whispers” to partially restrict posts to a “small, and more intentional audience.”  He wrote two blogs on August 25, 2007 expanding on his idea of “improving content filtering on Twitter by using channel tags.”

Hashtags help people to find others with common interests, event attendees, aid in a disaster, and information on a particular topic or spread news. 

Hashtags are a single word or a phrase of words (with no spaces).  Numbers are allowed in hashtags, but no special characters such as & or $.  Twitter encourages its users to use no more than two hashtags in a single post, although you will see some go crazy with them.  Instagram limits the use of hashtags to 30.

If you want to see an increase in the number of people who see your post, use a popular hashtag.  I often use #socialmedia when posting.  I don’t often use #socialmediamarketing as it takes too many characters.  Stay clear of using hashtags that no one is using.  It won’t help you a single bit.  

Searching for hashtag topics on Twitter is simple.  Just type your hashtag idea in the search bar and see what pops up.  If you see a hashtag in a post on Twitter, just click it and you’ll see other posts related to the same topic. This is particularly fun during an event such as #PresidentialDebate, #NASCAR or #AmericanIdol.  You can see what others are tweeting about at the same time you are watching events unfold.

Becoming familiar with the use of hashtags can make your social media experience more fun.   For example, Instagram’s “iseefaces” means a photo of an object that looks like a face.   The “tt” tag on Instagram means ThrowbackThursday where users post a picture from their childhood.  The #tt tag on Twitter means “trending topic” or something that a large number of people are posting about, such as “#10thingsyouhatetodo from today’s Twitter trending topics.