This is a great article on Mashable.com that we found useful and wanted to share with our readership.
One of the most complex features of Twitter for new users to understand is the hashtag, a topic with a hash symbol (“#”) at the start to identify it. Twitter hashtags like #followfriday help spread information on Twitter while also helping to organize it.
The hashtag is a favorite tool of conferences and event organizers, but it’s also a way for Twitter users to organize themselves: if everyone agrees to append a certain hashtag to tweets about a topic, it becomes easier to find that topic in search, and more likely the topic will appear in Twitter’s Trending Topics.
So how do you disseminate and make sense of all this hashtag madness? By going through the art of the hashtag step-by-step, of course. This short guide details how to identify, track, use, and organize hashtags in an efficient and useful way. Just be sure not to flaunt your new hashtag wisdom.
Have a tip to share on hashtags or a unique way you utilize them? Be sure to share with everyone in the comments.
1. Identifying hashtags
For new Twitter users, and even we veterans, figuring out what a specific hashtag is being used for can be a major chore. When a hashtag starts to trend, it gets even more difficult to parse the information stream.
So what’s the most efficient way to figure out those nasty hashtags? Luckily, there a few great tools that can assist in hashtag enlightenment:
What the Trend?: This useful little service makes it really easy to learn about trending hashtags. When something starts trending, What the Trend? will provide a quick blurb on what’s going on.
Twubs: Twubs, which we recently reviewed, uses a wiki system to help disseminate information on a hashtag. It aggregates tweets and imports pictures to help illuminate the topics being discussed.
Hashtags.org: While not the best at helping you understand the meaning behind a tag, Hashtags.org is good at showing you its use over time and recent tweets, which oftentimes is enough to figure out the meaning behind the tag.
Tagalus: Tagalus is a simple dictionary for hashtags. It’s very easy to find information on thousands of hashtags as defined by other users. You can also define a hashtag by tweeting tagalus.
2. Tracking hashtags
What’s buzzing on Twitter right now? If you’re a tech journalist, marketing professional, or just a person interested in trends, there are many useful tools and techniques to keep up with the Twitter conversation via hashtags.
If you’re trying to track tweets from a hashtag in real-time, Monitter and Twitterfall are good choices. Once again, Hashtags.org provides graphs and hour-by-hour information on top hashtags.
One last tip: if you need to track a less popular Twitter hashtag, try setting up a Twilert to get a daily email of the use of a specific hashtag.
For more, be sure to check out 15 Fascinating Ways to Track Twitter Trends.
3. Using hashtags
Although not terribly complicated, hashtags have some unwritten rules. The primary one to remember: don’t overuse them. If every one of your tweets IS a hashtag, you dilute the usefulness of them by fragmenting the conversation. In addition, many people will shy away from you because it seems spammy.
Another simple tip: give your hashtag context. Most people won’t actually know what your hashtag means, so give a quick explanation in one of your tweets or, if you’re making a hashtag, make it very apparent what it’s talking about.
Finally, if you’re looking to create a hashtag, be sure that it adds value for yourself and your followers. The best way to utilize them is when you need to organize information. Conferences, major events, and even reminders (i.e. #todo) can help organize specific tweets and make life easier on you and your followers.
The Twitter Fan Wiki also has some interesting reading material on hashtags if you’re looking to further your hashtag education.
4. Organizing hashtags
When I speak of organizing hashtags, I’m talking about conferences and events, which rely on the hashtag system more than almost any other entity. It’s become standard to track the conversation regarding speakers and afterparties via a hashtag.
If you’re about to put on an event or are looking to take your event to a new level, here are some useful tips for hashtag organization:
]]>- Choose a single hashtag early: This may seem simple, but it is vital to get right. Choose a simple hashtag that represents your event or brand. If your event is the Business of the Calling Ducks conference, don’t use #businessofthecallingducks as your tag. How about #bizducks instead?
- Remind attendees of the hashtag constantly: On your website, on your Twitter feed, at the opening remarks, and throughout the day, make a friendly reminder about your hashtag and that you can track the conversation through it.
- Provide a website widget: For anyone who isn’t using or knowledgeable with Twitter, provide an easy conversation tracker tool on your website. You can make one via Widgetbox or Tweetgrid.
We use the Twitter @Anywhere hovercard on @Medialeaders and we love it. It’s a great way to let visitors on your site follow you while reading, watching a video or just browsing. Watch the video above to see how it works and why you should use it on your site.
If you have questions on how to implement the code, please reach out to us and we can help.
Here’s what the Twitter @anywhere website has to say:
]]>When we designed Twitter, we took a different approach—we didn’t require a relationship model like that of a social network. Keeping things open meant you could browse our site to read tweets from friends, celebrities, companies, media outlets, fictional characters, and more. You could follow any account and be followed by any account. As a result, companies started interacting with customers, celebrities connected with fans, governments became more transparent, and people started discovering and sharing information in a new, participatory manner.
We’ve developed a new set of frameworks for adding this Twitter experience anywhere on the web. Soon, sites many of us visit every day will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com. Our open technology platform is well known and Twitter APIs are already widely implemented but this is a different approach because we’ve created something incredibly simple. Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of javascript. This new set of frameworks is called @anywhere.
When we’re ready to launch, initial participating sites will include Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube. Imagine being able to follow a New York Times journalist directly from her byline, tweet about a video without leaving YouTube, and discover new Twitter accounts while visiting the Yahoo! home page—and that’s just the beginning. Twitter has proven to be compelling in a variety of ways. With @anywhere, web site owners and operators will be able to offer visitors more value with less heavy lifting.
By Sue Zeidler
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Job-seeking in this 21st century recession may just have gone viral and mobile.
Since the start of the recession in December 2007, about 6.7 million workers have been laid off according to latest statistics — at a time the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have exploded, drawing millions of users per day.
As these sites continue to alter social and cultural landscapes, they are also transforming the job search process, enabling more and more people to connect with potential employers, promote their own skills, set up support groups and search for job leads and contacts.
“Mobile technology and social networking has shifted the whole job search paradigm,” said Susan Joyce, editor of Job-Hunt.Org, a site offering online job search tips. “You don’t need to stay glued to your phone or computer at home anymore.”
With mobile devices playing a bigger role in the social networking phenomenon, any job hopeful with a Web-connected or smartphone can now compose resumes, view job listings and contact prospective employers on the go.
Joyce suggests creating a resume through popular networking site LinkedIn — a business networking site that lets users create a profile, list skills, work history, employment goals and contact details — is among the more secure ways to compile a resume online.
It can be done via Research in Motion Ltd’s Blackberry device or Apple Inc’s iPhone, she added.
“The LinkedIn Profile is really the resume of the future,” Joyce said. “The ‘resume’ on LinkedIn is really the standard LinkedIn Profile, but it’s very popular with recruiters looking for good candidates.
“You could build your whole LinkedIn presence from any Web-enabled phone.”
There are any number of job-search applications — downloadable programs for your phone — available for the iPhone, for instance, including one piloted by recruitment consultancy Harvey Nash. Others pool information on jobs in travel and in education, among other sectors.
GETTING CREATIVE
With jobs still scarce, many hopefuls are getting creative about getting noticed. Many have begun using Twitter — a microblogging service that allows users to send 140-character messages at a time — to get the word out.
A career is unlikely to be launched on Twitter alone, but candidates are increasingly “tweeting” or posting messages to outline their skills, experiences and career goals. They are pasting links to their resumes on the micro-blogging service.
People can also use Twitter to follow recruiters or companies of interest and learn of networking events.
Job seekers have gotten job leads and tips on networking events that they otherwise would have missed, had it not been for their Twitter or Facebook account.
“It’s really helped in these hard times. You have a much easier time finding job and networking events. And every time I go to one of these events, I add at least one connection,” said Nilo Sarraf, who was laid off from Yahoo Inc recently and formed a Silicon Valley online networking group called Layoffs Cafe at www.meetup.com/Layoffs-cafe/.
Layoffs Cafe is one of several online support groups that have sprung up during the downturn, tipping off job seekers where physical networking events are taking place.
Chris Hutchins, a former management and business strategy consultant in Silicon Valley, launched LaidOffCamp as the online component to offline events.
“We focus on organizing events for people who are unemployed,” said Hutchins, noting there have been about 11 “LaidOff Camps” set up around the country, drawing anywhere from 100 to 600 participants who attend panels on topics such as how to live on a budget, how to develop a personal brand and how to find a job in the current market.
“We spent no dollars on marketing. If it weren’t for social media and blogs, Laidoff Camp wouldn’t exist,” he said.
While candidates these days are taking advantage of to easily access job information, one of the downsides, according to job seekers and employment experts, is managing the data.
“It can be overwhelming. It’s hard to weed out all the information and manage your time,” said Sarraf.
Privacy issues and falling prey to the many recruiting, work-at-home, make-a-million and resume creation software scams are also risks for the unwary.
“When someone is job hunting, they need to be careful. I know a lot of people who have been hurt by bogus resume companies. People tend to think if its online, its legitimate and when you’re doing a resume, people are being asked to provide a lot of personal information, such as where you live and your social security number,” she added.
(Reporting by Sue Zeidler; editing by Edwin Chan and Andre Grenon)