Using hashtags on Twitter is a great way to find people to follow, contribute to conversations that appeal to the interests of your target readers, and attract people to your tweets.
For example, I can search on Twitter to find out who’s tweeting about #BookMarketing, and I can include that hashtag in my own tweets to attract followers.
In today’s guest post, Sue Collier shares her tips for creating hashtags in Twitter. Be sure to click through to her terrific list of hashtags commonly used by authors.
Hashtags on Twitter - How to Create Your Own
Twitter hashtags (#) are used to categorize tweets according to subject matter. If you attach relevant hashtags to them, your tweets are more readily found by others interested in your subject matter. This gives you a better chance to increase your followers and it makes it easier to interact with other “tweeps.”
I’ve compiled a list of hashtags that pertain to writers, authors, and self-publishers. But what if you want to create your own? There are no specific rules in place for doing so, so here are some tips.
Make it short. Since each Tweet is limited to 140 characters, your hashtag should take up as little of that as possible. Try to keep your hashtag to 10 characters or less.
Make it as specific as possible. For instance, there are several genre-specific hashtags such as #SuspenseFiction and #SciFiChat. These make the conversation surrounding the hashtag more useful to people.
Make it easy to remember. #FollowFriday (or #FF) and #WriterWednesday (or #WW) are two examples of alliterative, easy-to-remember hashtags.
Make sure it isn’t already in use for another topic. There are third-party tools you can use to search this, such as HashTags.org.
About the Author
Self-publishing expert SUE COLLIER is coauthor of The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing,5th Edition and the forthcoming Jump Start Your Books Sales, 2nd Edition and Shameless Marketing for Brazen Hussies, 2nd Edition. She is also a contributing author to To Self (Publish) or Not to Self, due to be published in spring 2013. Her expertise has been featured on such places as ABCNews.com, Martha Stewart Living Radio, and Bottom Line Personal. Visit her blog at Self-Publishing Resources.
Once you hashtag a word with Twitter, Instagram and Google +, all account users can see it. It goes into the world of hashtags. This allows users who are not following you to see your tweets and content that you put out on various social media sites. So to keep it simple, people are only one hashtagged word away from possibly being seen by thousands, if not millions of people through social media.
Posted by: Carl Taylor | June 10, 2013 at 11:59 PM