#Bread Crumbs for the #Hashtag Limited

 

Hashtag Tips for Writers 

  

While traversing the twitterverse, there be landmines, pitfalls and holes into which you can fall and never be heard from again. That is the fear for writers who haven’t yet fully entered into Twitterland and the effective use of the #hashtag.

I’ve left breadcrumbs here for the Hansels and Gretals who need some basic information on the use of the #hashtag. I was a Gretal not too long ago, so I know there's a need.

#Hashtags can be effective, irritating or limp. If you throw a Tweet out without the proper hashtag, you are in effect, spinning your wheels. If, as social media-ites, we want to be helpful to our peeps in promoting their work (books, blogs, posts), we should use the hashtag as effectively as possible.

When using Triberr recently (great help for groups who band together for greater exposure), I’ve notice that Tweets that go out from using the Approve button don’t target anyone, or any group. They just floats out into the universe and land on some far shore where they probably just wash up with the dead seaweed. Maybe someone will come along and find them, but to be more effective, we need to send those tweets to those interested in the appropriate subject matter. Targeting your audience.

So, how can you be more effective? When sending out Tweets about your own work, you target (hopefully) the people who are interested in what you write about (gardening, vampires, books, authors, writing, paranormal, etc.).

The same should hold true if you want to be a good member in standing with your Tweeps, and that means sending your Tweets out with appropriate hashtags that target their potential audience. If you actually read a Tweep’s blog, then you know what it is about and can define who their audience is. If you are self-centered and wimpily sending out Tweets without genuine support for your Tweeps, they will see that and eventually drop you and not support you any longer. Don’t be dead weight.

So, when using the #hashtag:

1. Make sure it adds value (don’t be a robot and only hit the Triberr Approve button—use the Tweet button and add some effective hashtags.

2. Don’t overuse hashtags—no more than 3 in a single Tweet. (That doesn’t mean you can’t send another Tweet right away with different hashtags to target different audiences for an especially good post/blog/book.)

3. In using hashtags to promote, make sure they are on subject, be it blog or a post or an author you are promoting (take a look at the tags they have listed on their post and use those)

4. When re-tweeting, if you think of a hashtag related to the topic that may be different from what is already there and remove one if there are already 3.

For more on the hashtag:

• At http://www.hashtags.org/ you can find the frequency that a hashtag is used on Twitter. Plug in writer and you will pull up a graph to see how that hashtag trends in Twitter. You will notice that writer gets a lot of hits on Friday and Monday. But author is more effective on Wed. and Friday. Writing trends higher on Monday. Writers/authors are probably putting out more blogs on Monday, Wed., and Friday.

• Where to find useful hastags: http://twubs.com/

• How to use hashtags without looking like a total beginner: http://technorati.com/social-media/article/how-to-use-hashtags-without-looking/       

• What’s the trend today?: http://www.whatthetrend.com/

• Twitterfall: http://twitterfall.com/ to check out hashtags and what is being Tweeted right now.

Did you know all this stuff?

Can you add any info to this article to help others? Or direct us to additional information?

Thanks for your comments if this was/wasn’t helpful.

#hashtag #Twitter #writers #Triberr #tweets