Hashtags are very 2012.
Infact, "hashtag" was the word of the year in 2012 according to the American Dialect Society.
So what are they, why do people use them and when is it appropriate to use them?
Firstly, a hashtag looks like this: #insertword
Hashtags first came to public prevalence during the birth of Twitter, although had been used to group articles together in the coding world prior to this.
On Twitter, users, affectionately known as 'tweeters' post updates using a maximum of 140 characters. They often include a # followed by a "key-word" or "topic" to group their tweet into "said key-word" topic across the Twittersphere. (Have I lost you yet?)
Let me give you an example of a tweet before Hashtags:
"Can't wait to see Federer play at the Australian Open in Melbourne tonight!"
Now including Hashtags:
"Can't wait to see #Federer play at the #AustralianOpen in #Melbourne tonight!"
Any Twitter user now searching for content on the topic "Federer", "Australian Open" or "Melbourne" will now see this tweet.
Key word topics are completely customisable. You can create a topic that is only likely to be used by you such as #piggiebackmelbourne2013 or you could add to another popular topic such as #google.
Creating your own hashtag is ideal for reading fan feedback from branded events! Adding a common key word topic is great to make your tweet more visible.
All tweets are public, but only findable via search terms which match either your account name, twitter handle (which is an @ sign before your twitter name), twitter page URL or a hashtag. Therefore, using hashtags on your tweets increases your social media reach.
Now that the hashtag origins and their most common use have been established, let's go into more detail about the social media landscape in the past year especially.
Social Media has exploded, there are thousands of social media sites attracting users around the globe. The big players are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn but in Australia, Instagram and Pinterest have risen up the ranks and now have a sizeable following. Instagram and Pinterest also use the hashtag functionality to group images to particular topics.
With this plethora of social platforms now available, the different sites realised that users are lazy.
Users won't want to maintain multiple social media pages with similar updates about their lives and therefore might consolidate their social presence over time and eventually opt-out of their site! So these platforms created integrations between the sites that allowed a post on one site to then push a post to another.
For example, post a tweet to Twitter, and it will update Facebook with the same tweet but as a status update. Although this has been used successfully by many users, some users just haven't noted the subtle differences between the networks and as such, auto-syncing their networks has meant Hashtags have started appearing EVERYWHERE!
Question: Where can you use a hashtag for grouping posts/images on particular topics?
Answer: Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram & Pinterest.
Question: Where does a hashtag have no function but will alert your following that you are lazily integrating another social network and only optimizing your post for hashtag friendly social media?
Answer: Facebook.
What's worse is, often people haven't considered how their post affects the different communities reading the post. Here is a need to remember run-down of the purposes of each of these platforms:
- Twitter - great for spreading news, generating public reach, get information, fast.
- Facebook - fabulous for keeping up-to-date with friends and family
- LinkedIn - professional updates, keeping track of your professional network
- Instagram - stalk celebrity lives through images, take photos like a professional using your smart phone and share them with your friends and the public.
- Pinterest - keep an online scrapbook of your dream life, great ideas, recipes, products you want to purchase.
So, does that explain the hashtag phenomenon for you?
Are you an inappropriate Hashtag user?
Have you seen other people overuse Hashtags?
What is your hashtag pet hate?
Sincerely,
Director of Communications
