7-point primer on using hashtags on social media
From aiding a search to sparking a meme, hashtags can serve a variety of purposes. Keep these in mind as you navigate the various social networks.
The latest news regarding hashtags has the social media world all atwitter. Facebook is considering officially adopting hashtags.
It makes sense—people already use them there. Like the original use of hashtags on Twitter, the user base is driving this change.
While some of my friends bemoan the change (“Hashtags don’t belong on Facebook!”), others embrace it (“It’s about time!”).
Perhaps you’re new to hashtags, or have seen them and have no clue what they are or how to use them. Hashtags are words or phrases that begin with a pound sign (#). Adding the sign in front of a word makes it a clickable link on Twitter.
Their original use was to organize information in an easily searchable and readable format. With more than a half billion tweets flying around the Internet, hashtags allow you to hone in on what people are saying about a particular topic. Searching “#blogging” will pull all of the tweets with that hashtag. They will presumably all be about blogging.
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