I have been contacted several times in the past couple weeks with 2 questions- What is Follow Friday and what are those thingy’s with words and a pound sign in people’s Tweets?  Should we be doing this too?  Here are my answers in simple terms:

Q- What are hashtags?

A- Hashtags are a Twitter community driven system used to tag and categorize Tweets.  It makes searching for subjects in Twitter a lot easier.  Wild Apricot has a great post that explains hashtags. 

Hashtags became popular in 2007 during the San Diego fires and Tweets about the fires and the latest news could be found easily using the tag- “#sandiegofire” .  Here are some popular hashtags people are using these days- #followfriday, #jobs, #lost (my favorite show)….you get the idea.

Here is the scoop-Though I hear this step is no longer necessary, I would follow the @hashtags Twitter user so your hashtags will be indexed and tracked.  

Create a tag for your Tweet by adding a (#) in front of your keyword -but do a little research first on the best keyword to use. Go to http://hashtags.org to do your research (this site has a WEALTH of helpful information for you to research- I will be talking more about this as I get into it myself!)  You can also use this site to track tagged conversations that interest you.

Be advised: Hashtags are not loved by everyone- so use them wisely.  There are a couple of schools of thought on this- some say Twitter is about human conversation and not tagging.  Do not be a Twitter show off and over populate your Tweets with hashtags, this is considered obnoxious may cause some to unfollow you. A great resource to learn more about using hashtags and other new Twitter trends can be found on the Twitter Fan Wiki.

A good rule of thumb to follow is to focus on your update first, and only if it quantitatively adds value, to append one-three hashtags. There are no hard and fast rules, but Twitter should continue to be about answering the simple question: “What are you doing” rather than “What tags apply to what you’re doing?”

Q- What is Follow Friday?

A- Surely if you have used Twitter to any degree you have noticed there is a stream of Tweets recommending certain Twitterers with the #followfriday sign at the end of the post.  Curious minds want to know- what the heck is this?

Here is the scoop- last January, @micah, aka Micah Baldwin of Learn To Duck had the idea to promote smart, interesting, and valuable Twitterers by recommending them every Friday.  It all began with this little Tweet:

am starting Follow Fridays. Every Friday, suggest a person to follow, and everyone follow him/her. Today its @fancyjeffrey & @w1redone. 8:53 AM Jan 16th from TweetDeck

Remember- Twitter (and all social media actually) is about building relationships.  And you do this by bringing value to your network.  When you bring value, others notice and through movements like Follow Friday, they have the opportunity to recommend following your to their friends. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Web Marketing Therapy Related Links:

• Oh The Drama…To Un-Follow or Not Un-Follow in Twitter
• Explaining Twitter to Your Parents
• Twitter Search – Streamline your Twitxperience
• My Little Twitter Tricks