Wednesday Words: Hashtags

Hashtags - a thing that used to be only for Twitter - has taken over social media and it looks like it's here to stay.

Hashtags, otherwise known to us older folks as the pound button (#) on phones, are a way for people to categorize certain things.  It is often a single word or a group of words sans spaces grouped together. It is a form of metadata tag. And look something like this (taken from one of my Twitter posts):

You can use Hashtags in almost every form of social media now, including Facebook and Google+.

Hashtags are important because if anyone clicks on a hashtag in another person's posts, a list of posts with the hashtag included will show up and yours will be somewhere in there.  This allows people who may not normally see your posts to see them and potentially favorite/like them and follow you.

Hashtags are easy to use.  You can put them just about anywhere in a post - just make sure they are relevant to your post.  Most posts from this blog that I post to my Twitter above have hashtags #socialmedia and then #facebook or #twitter or whatever one I'm talking about.  I've earned a few favorites and shares from this.  

I will admit that I am horrible about using hashtags.  It's something I need to improve use on for Facebook and Google+.  How do you remember to use hashtags in social media?

Wednesday Words are a series of definitions released on Wednesday each week regarding a word found specific to Facebook's social media platform, or may be a generic word dealing with social media.  These definitions are to help provide you with a better understanding of common and uncommon terms associated with Facebook and social media.   You can find all the Wednesday Words by clicking on the Wednesday Words tag below.

Learn more about hashtags here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashtag