Monday, March 5, 2012

#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.

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

9 comments:

Erica Miles said...

I didn't know any of this and feel so clueless. I'm off to try out some of the links you mentioned. Thank you, Cora.

Catherine Johnson said...

Super post Cora, I didn't know any of that either. Thanks!

AnnFoweraker said...

Wow and so apposite for me at the moment! Thanks so much Cora!!

Cora said...

Erica, Catherine, Ann, thanks for your comments. I am new to all this also and knew that there must be others that needed this information. I picked up some new things just by doing the research for this post.

Jodi Lea Stewart said...

Excellent! I've been trying to send my fellow WANA-ers' blogs to specific targets, but I had limited knowledge. Your post was just what I needed. This will help us all to work smarter. Thanks so much, Cora.

Cora said...

I'm glad you got something useful out of it.

Unknown said...

thank you. Twitter is a closed book to me, so I found this very useful. I will check out the links.
Gwynneth
http://todayinshenaya.blogspot.com

Cora said...

Thanks for stopping by and letting me know you popped in.

Pencildancers said...

Thanks for this, Cora. I don't know how I missed it. Probably because I hit approve on triberr the week I was exhausted.
Diana