The basics of #hashtags and following terms in Twitter

A client asked me yesterday to clarify a few aspects of Twitter for him. I’ve summarised my points below:

What are Hashtags?

Hashtags in twitter are a way of ensuring that your tweets are associated with a particular thread/conversation. So, to join the conversation during ABC’s Q&A, you add #qanda to your tweet.

From there, many Twitter clients have the ability to filter by tags so that users can follow the running conversation as tweets are submitted.

Indeed, if you go to the homepage of Twitter and search #qanda, you’ll get the same effect. You’ll see all the people talking about Q&A, often in response to each other.

Another example?

Let’s say you are looking to recruit employees through Twitter. Write something like: “ is looking for an excellent . Great team. $$$. Immediate Start. #sydneyjobs.”, where #sydneyjobs is a recognised and existing Hashtag and plenty of people monitoring it for jobs. (It is important you don’t make hashtags up because if they don’t exist, people won’t be following them and nobody will hear your message.)

In the event that your business has its own Twitter account, replace “ with ‘@mycompany’ so that the post also appears on your company’s Twitter wall.

Tweetdeck

A key feature of Twitter is the ability to follow companies, individuals and especially conversations about terms you’re interested in. For instance, you can listen to people talking about finding a great ‘sydney web designer’ and from there, politely introduce yourself.

I monitor terms on Twitter on the run on my iphone; the official Twitter client for iPhone is Tweetie, though Tweetdeck is better – and free.

Once downloaded, you can create columns that you can easily swipe through.

There are a few column types, including a ‘search term’. Select that, and enter the search term you want to follow: e.g. ‘sydney web design’. From thereon, any mention of ‘sydney web design’ will come up in the column.

I would also set ‘sydney web development’ and so forth to allow you to monitor conversations about related terms: often, people are reaching into their own networks with questions/comments, and this allows you to potentially reach out.