The Complete Guide To Building Your Twitter Audience
– Chapter 6
You may be asking what exactly is a hashtag and why do people spend so much time talking about them. A hashtag in a Tweet allows a user to click on that word and shows the results of other Tweets that have used the hashtag. This helps to categorize tweets making it easier to find similar tweets on the topic. It is also a very clear way to represent the topic you are discussing.
How To Use #Hashtags
You should only use hashtags if you have already confirmed the topic by doing a Twitter search, go to search.twitter.com or use any search tool. This will ensure that you are indeed using the correct tag for what you intend to convey.
You should limit the number of hashtags in any given posts to one or two very relevant and meaningful hashtags. There is very little benefit from including more.
You may always create a new hashtag by simply putting a # sign in front of a word with no spaces. This can be very beneficial if you are promoting a webinar or event that you want to be shared with others. You can carry the hashtag theme in all your promotional materials to allow people to follow the topic.
You should respect the intent of a particular hashtag. You should never hijack a hashtag.
Twitter Trends & Hashtags
Another reason hashtags have gained in popularity is that they can appear in the Trend section if they gain enough moment.
Because this is a particular area which Twitter monitors its trending topics.
Are there rules for what can become a Trend?
It is possible to abuse Trends. Of course, this is against the Twitter Rules. The following behaviors and others like them could cause your account to be filtered from search or even suspended:
- Adding one or more topic/hashtag to an unrelated Tweet in an attempt to gain attention in search
- Repeatedly Tweeting the same topic/hashtag without adding value to the conversation in an attempt to get the topic trending or trending higher
- Tweeting about each Trend in order to drive traffic to your profile, especially when mixed with advertising
- Listing Trends in combination with a request to be followed
- Tweeting about a Trend and posting a misleading link to something unrelated