Hello hello… recently I wrote a
flash fiction on Hashtag. And then saw even more posts on FB by people writing #Happy #Onam #Friends etc etc. So I thought I should dig out some details and information
on the correct usage of a hashtag. I am in no way telling you I have mastered
the art or am the Hashtag professor or anything. But there’s no harm in sharing
some knowledge.
What is a Hashtag?
# This symbol that you see on
your key board, on your phone is the Hashtag symbol. Till some time back it was
one of those silent and idle symbols which used to be present on the landline
number pad on the right side of 0. And this symbol also denoted number while
writing address, as in #3 so n so road. But now in the life and times of social
media this tiny symbol # is quite the queen itself.
Now when you are putting #
followed by a word without a space you are making that word a metadata tag. For
instance, #HappyOnam. Now whenever someone is searching this metadata your tweet/post/photo
appears in the search list. It is quite
helpful in group searches.
Where to use Hashtag?
Hashtagging is done across social
media platforms to make your post/tweet more search friendly and more relevant.
You could use it on Face Book, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram etc etc. But hold
on, you gotta use it differently across these platforms.
Uses of Hashtag
You could build your own
brand/topic, you could follow a trend and see who’s thinking what on a
particular topic. You could run a campaign and ask people to join in. The
latest being the #RiceBucketChallenge on twitter.
Check out this infographic on the History of Hashtag
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| Infographic by Offerpop. Click image for full size. |
Hashtag on Twitter
The easiest way to make your
tweet visible to the world other than your followers is to use a hashtag. So
if I were to wish Onam or New Year to
everyone and not just my followers on Twitter I would tweet it as #HappyOnam or
#HappyNewYear and not #Happy #Onam or #Happy #new #year. Because no one will
search to see a trend with only Happy or year! Well right now #HappyNewYear can
also give you the search result of the Shah Rukh Khan’s latest by the same
name. hmm.. ok stop that grin.
While we were all going crazy
over the World Cup Football in Brazil you would have noticed for every match FIFA gave out the Hashtag of the day #BRAvsGer or #ITAFRA or #CROMEX. Now these were
the hashtags that you would use in your tweets so that they appeared in the
search and people saw who is talking what about that particular match. Same is
the case when Colours Tv gives out #JummeKiRaatwith Salman for the Friday
Salman episodes of Big Boss. No it doesn’t mean I watch it every time!
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| This is how the Trending Topics of the day appear on Face Book. Not necessarily everything you put a hashtag on will start trending. |
Hashtag in FaceBook
Add hashtag to trending topics
rather than adding to almost anything and everything you post. All hashtags will
have a clickable link and your relevant post will appear in the trending topic.
But as I said, go easy with your hashtags.
Even if you have Friends Only
posts with Hashtags they are visible to Friends and not to the world. So you
could be happy about that.
Hashtag in Google Plus
Now G+ is something I use rarely, may be only to connect with bloggers and blogging communities at times and
never for connecting with friends and family. They don’t even use G+, anyways,
you could use hashtags for your blog topics as well. If you are dropping your
blog link add a description with a hashtag, it is more likely that your link
will appear when someone searches for a niche topic. Like if I were to submit
my 100 word story link in a G+ community I would write “My latest #100WordStory
up on blog” followed by the link.
Hashtag on Instagram
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| People also go crazy and sometimes put a hashtag before every thing under the sun Source |
Hashtag on Instagram works in a
completely different level. You may use as many hastagged words which is
relevant to your picture. Because in Instagram you can search only with hashtag
or by the username. So people go crazy and put #Beautiful #Moonlit #night #full
#moon #Instapic #Indiapic etc etc etc. Practically, you should have a description
or a caption for the photo followed by the hashtagged words so that they appear
on search.
On Instagram, however, if you
search and get your photo in the search list in the first few pages you are
lucky!! People pour in with pictures and hashtags by seconds across the world. I
find it quite difficult to figure out my photo in the search list if I have
used a hashtag #selfie!!!
So you have loads of hashtag info
here. So go easy with it guys and have fun. Social media after all is a place
to have fun, something that I am doing right now.