What in the world does # mean on Twitter?

If you’re like the thousands of users joining Twitter each day, you’ve no doubt seen a familiar little symbol prior to key words and phrases within Tweets. If you’re like most new Twitter users, and are still navigating all of the nuances of the site, you may not know what “#” actually means.

What is a Hashtag?

According to hashtags.org, Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.

Hashtags are a great way to get discussions going about a particular topic. Search for #socialmedia or #twitter and you will get a listing of all of the Tweets that include that particular tag. Those Tweets may include opinions, more information about the topic, or questions posed looking for answers.

Another big use for Hashtags is the popular “Follow Friday.” On Friday, Twitter users around the world promote feeds they’ve liked by listing a few and attaching the hashtag of Follow Friday.

For example, one Friday on our account, @massmediacc listed the following:

#Follow Friday @tonyillia @vinzani @ErikSherman @land4business @colliersparish @lasvegascre

This is a way to aggregate a huge list of people’s recommended follows, and discover new and interesting users.

How to use Hashtags

I’ve found that the best way to look for tags and topics is by using the tool search.twitter.com. I either type in a hashtag I’ve noticed and want to follow, or simply research a topic using some key words related to it with # out in front.

A colleague recently forwarded me a great site using hashtags to discuss social media in the BtoB sphere. http://hashtagsocialmedia.com/live/ . Its one way people are creating and continuing a conversation based on a key topic of interest.

Try out a hashtag today on Twitter. It’s a great way to connect with others who have similar interest and research brands and topics for marketing.

To find out more about the topic, visit the below sites and read on.

Twitter fan wiki entry on Hashtags: http://twitter.pbworks.com/Hashtags
Hastags.org http://hashtags.org/tag/twitter/messages
Cision article: http://blog.us.cision.com/2009/04/twitter-hashtags-finding-your-community-within-a-community/

Written By:

Melissa Gullickson, account executive with MassMedia Corporate Communications

Tags: advertising, Las Vegas PR Firm, las vegas public relations firm, marketing, MassMedia, Nevada PR Firm, social media, twitter

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.