Taking the mystery out of #Twitter #Hashtags
Twitter Hashtags bring you new followers highly interested in your subject
What are hashtags
Hashtags are words on Twitter prefixed with the # character. Just as @ has a special meaning, so does #. I can write “I like to listen to music”. That will show up a Twitter search if I look for music. I can also write “I like to listen to #music”. This will show up only for a search for #music.
We use #hashtags to tag specific bits of information on Twitter to make it easier to find. For example, I like to post pre-sale password information about upcoming concerts. Others like to talk about #fashion #business and everyone’s favorite #makingmoney
Tools of the trade
Working with Hashtags will take more effort than using Twitter in general. First of all, it is actually a mistake to attempt to use your Twitter client to attempt to keep up with a very high volume hashtag.
Twitter limits its users, except for white-listed applications, to only 100 API requests per hour. Ordinarily, that’s enough for near-realtime interaction. That is absolutely not even remotely enough for real-time interaction with hundreds of people.
You can’t use two Twitter applications connected to the same account simultaneously. If, for example, you want to try using Seesmic desktop to follow a hashtag, and Twhirl to post updates, you will probably run out of API requests, which will result in a pause of your updates.
This brings us to white-listed applications. You can use Twitter Search, Twitterfall, Twitter Monitter and other similar solutions without incurring API “cost”. Warning: this can be overwhelming!
Twitter Search is a manual tool and is usually the first exposure to hashtag searches for most users. Clicking a hashtag in Twhirl, for example, will bring up search.twitter.com for that hashtag in a web browser.
TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop allow us to setup casual search columns. I use the word “casual” here because those columns will not be complete in case of high volume of traffic due to API limitations.
Twitterfall and Twitter Monitter are more interesting.
Out of the two, Twitter Monitter lets you re-tweet using standard Twitter interface, while Twitterfall is more integrated and uses direct Twitter API to post your updates.
Of course, as my luck would have it during writing this article, Monitter’s re-tweeting is broken, and Twitter’s oAuth mechanism is also broken, which disables interactive tools with TwitterFall. Fun!
For most fun, set Twitterfall to 10 tweets per second on a very high resolution monitor in portrait mode!
Let’s look at several scenarios
Sporting events
I recently participated in a live tweet event of Formula 1. As I was watching Formula 1 Chinese Grandprix live, I setup a hashtag column in my Seesmic Desktop.
In case of Formula 1, we probably had at least several dozen if not more people participating in talking about the race live. This turned Twitter into one giant global sports bar.
We did not know each other, but we were all following one hashtag #f1.
This is what this hashtag looks like today.
This is what it looked like during the race. This particular excerpt is just after Red Bull’s historic 1-2 victory.
11 updates via web interface vs. 8 updates via Seesmic Desktop interface
Breaking news
When news breaks, such as election irregularities in South Africa right this second, they will usually have a hashtag associated with them.
At this moment, that’s #saelections
People can follow and contribute to the story as it develops
12 updates via web interface and I could probably improve on that by turning off avatars.
Conferences
#adtechsf20 was the hashtag for the Adtech conference in San Francisco. Attendees can tag the content and events related to that conference with this hashtag. This is really the same concept as popular topics, so I’ll skip its screenshots.
Popular topics – let’s make money with hashtags
As a marketer, you probably couldn’t care less about any of the items above. How can you use hashtags to make money?
- If you wish to target people who are into fashion, tag your update with #fashion
- If you wish to target people into making money, tag your update with #makingmoney
- Anyone who searches for that particular hashtag as a result of clicking on some update will also see your message.
- If your tweet is sufficiently high value, they will probably follow you.
In this example, I am illustrating how I use #presale to tag my ticket password tweets. You will notice that this is not a very high volume hash tag. That means my information remains searchable and highly visible for days instead of minutes or seconds. If you are a niche marketer, I am sure you can appreciate the potential of using highly specific hashtags to generate this kind of search results.
Please do not inject improperly tagged information into Twitter stream
- As a marketer in social media, you want to engage with your audience
- Upsetting us is unlikely to result in a high value engagement
- It is far more productive to have us follow you out of interest rather than deception
Friends mentioned in this article
Written in part in response to
About the author
Leonid S. Knyshov (@wiseleo) writes about social media and other topics of interest on http://Knyshov.com
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Licensed under Creative Commons Content License: BY-ND
Very useful! Thanks.
One word reaction from me (apart from writing "one word reaction from me")
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Brilliant!
Thank you, I appreciate further re-tweets
Heard about all of the tools except twitter monittor, so thanks for the tip. The real use of twitter tags everyone is finding however is the use of a combination of these tools to automate an account that specfically focuses on marketing to a specific niche. These tools are making it easier for twitter to be taken over by robots, but I hope this doesn;t become a long-term trend.