What’s a #Hashtag?

I used to think a hashtag was a crocht ball that hipster boys kicked around in their bare feet.

Apparently that’s a hacky sack.

Did you know the 33rd anual World Hacky Sack Championship will be in Poland this year?

I don’t know of any hashtag conventions, but you never know.

I’ll keep you posted. 🙂

Anywho, let’s get back on topic.

A hashtag is just a way to tag a conversation. It’s mostly used in Twitter. If you see it in Facebook, chances are someone is using an application like Tweet Deck to post the same information in both locations.

Hashtags were created for general organization and public discovery. Anyone can create a hashtag by adding a pound sign (looks like this #) in front of a converstion.

Except for Prince.

Can you imagine if he was still The Artist Formerly know as Prince?

Then we would be using a hashag symbol with another symbol, and then just everyone would be confused.

Whew! So glad he figured out his true identity.

When using a hashtag, you have to remember that you want people to find your post when searching by the topic you tag. So, if you are posting on Twitter about Ice Cream, you would type #IceCream, not #Ice Cream. The latter would only make “Ice” searchable, and let’s be honest. No one likes a party with just ice.

In terms of capitol or lower case letters, there are no rules. However, if I capitalize the “I” and “C” in #IceCream, it does make the hashtag a little bit easier to read, rather than just plain #icecream.

(Not to be confused with plain ice cream, as in no flavor.)

Oftentimes, companies will host or sponsor Twitter parties, and you will see hashtags used in posts where some are about the topic, and others really have nothing to do with what the hashtag is about. You can always click on the hashtag anyway to join in the fun, or try starting your own conversation with a new hashtag.

(I think we better have another post explaining Twitter parties.)

When a specific hashtag is used over and over again, it may become a Twitter Trending Topic.

Here’s the topics that wer hot when I sat down to write this post yesterday:

Twitter trends can be just about anything. A person, a place, or even a product.

If you look above, you will see a yellow arrow describing “GetCurveAppeal” as a Promoted Trend. Even though no one owns a hashtag,  Twitter will sell that top spot to companies so that their hashtag is placed above popular trends. Twitter users interact with Promoted Trends the same way they interact with any other Trending Topic.

Promoted Trends are different than Promoted Tweets. Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets purchased by advertisers who want to reach a wider group of users, or to spark interest  from their existing followers. If you look below, FAGEUSA is paying for a Promoted Tweet, and it appears on my suggested following list.

Whether it’s a Promoted Trend, or a Promoted Tweet, both utilize hashtags to make their topic searchable.

(On a side note, if you are wondering why my twitter page is tan instead of the typical bird blue, it’s just a setting I changed within my account.)

So… ready to give hashtags a try? Go to your Twitter account and do a search for #Tech4Moms. There you will find all the tweets that have references to out site. Just remember, if you want to talk to us directly, you need to type @Tech4Moms.

@ is talking to someone or something, # is about that thing or about that person.

Got it? Good luck!

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