Power of Hashtag

Nowadays hashtags are used by millions on all social networking sites. The idea of using a hashtag came from Chris Messina in 2007 but Twitter added an option for users to search for hashtags only in 2009. It is a way of making it easier for people to find, follow, and contribute to a conversation.

You need to follow some simple rules to make #: no punctuation, special characters like % ‘’ ! and no spaces, start from #, don’t string too many words together with a single hashtag, Avoid over-tagging every word in your post.

Why do you need to use a hashtag?

• It helps you get found by your target audience.
• It improves your clickthrough rates
• A hashtag is an easy way for people to categorize, find and join conversations on a particular topic.
• Hashtags can help you to communicate with followers, drive engagement for your content, and attract a new audience to your brand.

# should become part of every post so start from popular hashtags in your industry or trending # and move to using specific company hashtag.

Here are facts about the hashtag.

• Around 125 million hashtags are shared by Twitter’s 328 million users every day.
• The first hashtag to be used on Twitter was Messina’s sample #barcamp.
• The term hashtag was added to the Merriam Webster dictionary in 2014. The definition said: “A word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorises the accompanying text (such as a tweet).”
• It was originally called Octothorpe. AT&T employee Don MacPherson thought the sign needed a more official name, so he chose Octothorpe—“octo” because it has eight points, and “thorpe” because he was a fan of football hero Jim Thorpe.

At the moment, most popular business’ hashtags are #jobs, #business, #sales, #economy, #marketing, #socialmedia, #startup.

What are the most used hashtags for you?