Lawyer Marketing Definitions: What Is A Twitter #hashtag?

Written by Jeff Berman

June 23rd, 2009 at 2:44 am

without comments

Subscribe / Connect:

Posted in Blog

Tagged with Hashtags, Lawyer marketing, twitter

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed or email updates on this topic.

I’ve recently had a few lawyers ask me what a #hashtag is on Twitter, so I decided to write a post to help others with the same question.

What Is A Hashtag:

The Twitter Fan Wiki defines a hashtag as the following:

“Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.”

How Do I Use a Hashtag?

“First, follow @hashtags on Twitter. They will follow you back automatically, and your hashtags will be tracked.

Next, start using hashtags in your tweets, preceding key words. It can be helpful to do a little research first, to find out if the subject you’re tweeting already has an established hashtag.

Finally, track other tweets on the subjects you’re interested in (ie: those containing the appropriate hashtags) by browsing/searching at Hashtags.org or TwitterGroups. You can set it up with RSS feeds as well.”

Why Are Hashtags Useful?

Hashtags are useful for tracking events or topics of interest to you on Twitter. For example, many people want to follow the tweets that are posted about the Iran election as it unfolds. By attaching the hashtag #iranelection to a tweet, that message will appear to others monitoring or searching tweets on that subject.

Examples of Hashtag Uses from Twitter Fan Wiki:

Events or conferences, e.g.: “Tara’s presentation on communities was great! #barcampblock”
Disasters: “#sandiegofire A shelter has opened up downtown for fire refugees.”
Memes: “My #themeword for 2008 is conduct.”
Context: “I can’t believe anyone would design software like this! #microsoftoffice”
Recall: “Buy some toilet paper. #todo”
Quote: “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt #quote