WTH? What is a Twitter #Hashtag?

I’ll admit that it took me a while to wrap my brain around the purpose of a hash tag. The phrase, hash tag, of course, gave no clue to its use and honestly, it made me feel a little dirty just saying it. Say it out loud and you’ll know what I mean.

When I finally figured our what a hash tag was, and what to do with it, I realized it wasn’t as difficult as it seemed.

So, what is it?

A hash tag is simply a way for people to search for tweets that have a similar topic. For example, let’s say you post a tweet about the Super Bowl.  Instead of using “Super Bowl” in your tweet, you would use “#SuperBowl” – creating a clickable link that can be used to search all tweets mentioning the same hash tag. Your tweet would look like this: Can’t wait to see Green Bay crush it at the #SuperBowl.

You can also create unique hash tags to collate tweets around a specific topic. It’s a great way for marketers to monitor and engage in conversations around an event or a topic.

Simple, eh? Just include the tag in your tweet and other people searching for the same tag will be able to find it. Hash tags are not case sensitive, so it doesn’t matter if you use #superbowl, or #SuperBowl – the same results will be displayed.

Some other things to remember when using a hash tag in a tweet are:

No spaces

If your hash tag has more than one word – like Super Bowl – make sure you don’t leave any spaces. #Super Bowl is not a hash tag for the Super Bowl, it will be a hash tag for the word “Super.”

Keep it relevant, but keep it short

With a maximum of 140 characters for your tweets, keep your hash tags as short as possible. If you use something like “Can’t wait to arrive in sunny San Francisco and get this event off the ground #themostincredibleconferenceinthewholeworld,” there will be no room left for retweeting!

Register your hash tag

If you want to use a hash tag to “organize” tweets around an event or conference, be sure to check if the hash tag has already been used. Twubs is a great place to register your hash tag, search for topics, and more.

Don’t over-do it

One of the quickest ways to lose Twitter followers than by abusing the use of hash tags (okay, you can’t tell me that doesn’t sound dirty…) If you start tweeting like this: #ordered a #blueberry #bagel with #creamcheese #today…Well, first: Who really cares? And second: It’s annoying. Just don’t do it.

There are tons more benefits of using hash tags, but this should answer some of your questions and get you started.

As always, feel free to post a question in the comments below and I’ll try my best to come up with an intelligent answer.