What are Hashtags and How Can I Use Them?

What is a Hashtag?

In the land of Twitter, a hashtag is a keyword or group of words (without spaces) preceded by the #. The # is called the hash symbol in the Queen's English, though we here in American usually refer to it as the pound sign or number sign.

You use hashtags in tweets that you want categorized, essentially. For example, this evening as I was watching the OSU men's basketball game, I was tweeting about the team's performance in the game, as you see in the example below. Example of a tweet I sent using hashtags

I used two different hashtags but they are pretty much about the same thing: Ohio State. I used them both because both are relevant keywords regarding Ohio State and I wanted my tweet to receive maximum exposure. Notice that I used one within the context of the sentence, and one at the end just as a signifier. Either approach is acceptable, though it's best to use them within the context of your tweet since you only have 140 characters.

How do I Use Hashtags?

There are many different uses!

To indicate your tweet has to do with a real time event or discussion (can be a very useful to save precious characters in a tweet when you're talking about a widely recognized topic which can be summed up with a short hashtag.)

Can you believe that song she just sang on #AmericanIdol?

I'm going to the #CBJ hockey game tonight at Nationwide Arena.

The still-raging #healthcare debate is driving me crazy.

To designate that your tweet is relevant to a certain audience

I'm hosting a webinar that teaches #SocialMedia for #SmallBusiness.

Does anyone have any resources for parents of #autistic children?

To tag your tweets as coming from a specific event (this is common for conferences and workshops where Twitter users will provide play-by-play tweets on speeches, presentations, etc.)

He says that it's really important to floss. #dentalconf2011

About to head into the first breakout session at #randombizevent!

To use a Twitter meme (bonus: a handy list of Twitter memes from Mashable!)

#FollowFriday love to @alsage13 and @gonggongcomm!

Listening to @fitzandtantrums again! #MusicMonday

What do People do With Hashtags?

Well, when reading tweets within your Twitter stream, hashtags can serve as a useful categorization system. In my opinion, that's their finest purpose. But they're great when searching for a specific topic. Using tonight's example of #osu again, I could search for #osu on Twitter and then follow the results (in real time) to see what's being said:

Example of a Twitter search based upon the #osu hashtag

Hashtags almost always appear within Twitter's trending topics. (Read our recent blog post on Twitter trending topics...

There are some other hashtag-related sites that merit investigation

• What the Hashtag (a search site with impressive analytics and definitions)
• hashtags.org (a search site with analytics)
• Tagalus (a Hashtag dictionary/directory)
• Twubs (Twitter groups based around hashtags)
• hashtag.org (a search site)

Tags: social media | twitter