

As mentioned above, a Twitter user came up with the idea to help him and other participants categorize their tweets surrounding a topic, whether event, conversation, or otherwise. Here’s how to use hashtags effectively on each of these platforms, so you can optimize your social media strategy. To find out more on using hashtags and understanding your social media platforms sign-up to one of our webinars today! They’re also important to keep an eye on industry trends, and the competition. Proper hashtag usage is essential for brands to track mentions and respond effectively. Besides Twitter, they’re essential on Instagram, and they’ve found their way on LinkedIn and Facebook too. Hashtags are now commonplace in the social media landscape.

On the flipside, content producers who misuse hashtags struggle with having their content ignored. Yet, when hashtags are misused, viewers find themselves sorting through stacks of posts looking for something specific. It’s easy to use a hashtag like #contentmarketing to find thousands of posts about that topic.

These days, everyone knows how useful hashtags are in finding relevant content. In 2009, Twitter made it possible to search via hashtags, which meant anyone could find accounts to follow or participate in conversations via hashtags. Other Twitter users saw the value of adding hashtags to follow and engage in topical conversations on the network. The Twittersphere realized the power of the hashtag when people started adding #sandiegofire to their tweets about a San Diego fire. His early tweet, “How do you feel about using (#) pound for groups as in #barcamp ?” was met with criticisms that it was too “nerdy.”īut, Chris persevered. Silicon Valley product designer Chris Messina invented the now ubiquitous hashtag when he was searching for a way to organize the fast-moving Twitter stream.
