“I am so old, I remember when a Hashtag was called a Pound sign”
The transition of a pound to a Hashtag is evident in the present era of internet and technology. “Hashtag,” an expression that is well known in the online world and is often used these days.
Before, we proceed further; it is important to discuss What is a Hashtag and how to use a Hashtag?
Today, all of us are connected with the outside world through the medium of social media and other online platforms and often see sign # in use.
To be honest, when I started making use of the online platforms, the use of a Hashtag by people never made any sense to me. I always wondered why people placed # in front of certain words or messages in their web content.
But, soon I became familiar with the thing and explored the reason behind its use.
What is the Hashtag All About ?
A hashtag is a # sign that is often placed before a word or a complete message. Acquired its origin in Twitter, it is now used on various social media platforms, including Pinterest, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Instagram and other online media.
It is prefixed without space with a word or message and serves as a searchable link and directs a person towards hashtagged conversations.
To simplify, it is used to categorize the quotes or messages. These are used as keywords and can have a single word or a group of words,
but all the words must be written in a single stretch without any space.
For example – #Twitterfollowers
History – We all are familiar with metadata tags…..
They came into existence in the year 1988 on a platform called Internet Relay Chat (IRC), where it was used for the first time…..
Since then, meta tags have been used for grouping content like images, videos, blogs and articles into different categories.
During the year, 2007, Nate Ridder (San Diego resident) started prefixing hashtag #sandiegofire with all his posts for informing people about the scenario of San Diego at that particular period.
By the year 2009, Twitter adopted it and popularized the concept throughout the world.
Advantage of Hashtag in Social Media Platform
The use of hashtags on the social media platform is common and offers an opportunity to businessmen to connect with their customers and execute new strategies and build a distinct brand identity.
The advantages involved with the use of the sign # are:
- Businesses can use these signs for generating a higher number of people towards their websites for increasing their brand awareness. They can make use of hashtags for categorizing particular topics related to their industry. They can attract more people to the concerned discussions and generate higher traffic.
- Apparently, it helps the companies to encourage interaction with their potential customers in the social media platforms.
- Creation of a hashtag helps the businesses measure the success of their online marketing strategy as it contributes to organizing searches.
Why not, create your original hashtags related to your business and encourage user interaction.
How to Use Hashtag in the post or social share?
Just add the sign “#” before the phrase, numbers or a word without spaces…..
Do not put a hashtag before punctuation. There are a few rules to follow before applying a hashtag.
The major rules to follow are:
- Try to use limited words with it. Do not use a big cluster of words with a single # sign.
- Only make use of these tags on relevant tweets.
- Don’t spam #with #hashtags. Putting it in between the sentence is a spam as it #makes #reading #difficult #and #annoying.
- Avoid over hashtagging, Try to use only 1 or 2 hashtag per post not more than that.
- Make use of keywords related to your business for targeting your audience.
Creating a hashtag is not difficult, but still doing it in a right way is not always easy.
What does a Hashtag mean and how to use it correctly in social media platforms is the ongoing question.
People are readily making use of it, and the great thing about hashtags is that it allows people to share their content online. Making use of the tag assists in identifying what people are sharing in the social media platforms.
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