Thursday, August 16, 2012

Thursday Review—The Best Choices for Twitter Hashtags


One of the best parts of Twitter is the Hashtag. This lowly number sign turns any bit of text into a searchable topic within the Twitter universe. But, the magic only happens if you choose your hashtags wisely.

Today I’m going to review some of the best practices for using, finding and researching hashtags. If you’re not quite certain what I’m talking about you can read my post on Twittering Your Time Away to catch up.

First, a quick lesson on the difference between the @ sign and a # (hashtag). The @ sign is used for people or entities that have a Twitter account. The # is used for a topic.

Hashtag Etiquette
Try to never use more than three hashtags in any one tweet. If you can make it two that’s even better. Otherwise you end up looking like a used car sales man. If you’re trying to reach more groups, schedule multiple tweets, at different times, about the same subject and target your groups two at a time.

Always research your hashtag before you use it. Never assume it’s the correct one. For example, I was targeting military families with tweets about my devotional for military families and I thought #military would be the logical hashtag. No, turns out that hashtag is frequently used by those trying to date someone in the military. Not really the demographic I was trying to reach. The hashtag I wanted was #militaryfamily and #deployment. Here are four places I like to research hashtags:

The following is a list of popular hashtags for our industry. Please note that while this list is extensive, it's not exhaustive. 

List of Hashtags 
#100words flash fiction
#ACFW American Christian Fiction Writers
#Amazon
#amediting  posts from people who are editing

#amreading for readers
#amwriting  posts from people who are writing
#askagent  agent questions and answers

#author

#authors
#Christian

#Christfic Christian fiction
#devo Christian devotion
#devotion Christian devotion
#ebooks
#editing
#editmark

#fictionfriday

#freebooks
#freelancelife
#freelancewriter
#fridayflash  flash fiction on a Friday

#Goodreads
#Kindlebooks
#kindlefree
#Kindle_promo
#JesusTweeters from believers
#microfiction
#nanowrimo  national novel writing month

#novels

#novelists

#poem

#poet

#poets

#poetry

#pubtip  publication tips

#publishing

#reading
#scifi

#selfpublishing

#socialmedia
#socialnetworking
#suspense
#twitter
#vss   very short story

#webfic  web fiction

#weblit   web literature

#wip   work in progress

#womensfic
#womensfiction
#wordcount

#writegoal

#writequote

#writer

#writers
#writetip  writing advice

#writing

#writingtips  writing advice
#wrotetoday 
 

Finally, here’s a great post from Daily Writing Tips about Twitter. And an open GoogleDoc Spreadsheet, found in that post, with a list of current Twitter chats.

All of these should help you find the hashtags best suited to your situation.

I’d love to hear from you now. Twitter is ever-changing and hashtags come and they go. What are some of your favorites?

Don’t forget to join the conversation,
Blessings,
Edie

20 comments:

  1. Great info, Edie! Thanks for the advice and help finding appropriate hashtags.

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  2. You just keep it coming. Thanks for the info and resources.Now to use them!

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    1. Marcia, thanks so much for the encouragement! Blessings, E

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  3. Wow, Edie! Great advice.
    I'm curious, though: Is there not a hashtag for social media like #socialmedia or something for tips like this?

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    1. Beth, great question. I totally forgot to include those. I'll go back and add them to the post, but here they are:
      #socialmedia
      #Twitter
      #socialnetworking
      Thanks for stopp9ng by! Blessings, E

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  4. Hello! Beth, I just checked (so I could tweet this post), and #socialmedia is a popular hashtag. Another one that you could use for this post would be #twitter. Edie, I've been using hashtags.org for awhile because of you. Just now, I checked to see if #amlearning or #vocab would be better for one of my blog posts - #vocab is definitely the better choice. Thanks so much!

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    1. Julia, that's great work! Thanks for sharing those. Blessings, E

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  5. Great advice! I like to use #JesusTweeters and #writing a lot. I'll have to do more research on some of the others I tend to use...

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    1. Lindsay, it seems the learning curve never stops! I'm always researching new hashtags. Thanks for stopping by, Blessings, E

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  6. I was recently wondering about this topic. Thanks for the info. Love the new look of your blog and the new schedule for this year.

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  7. Ellen, thank you! I thought it was time for a blog facelift. I'm glad this post is helpful! Blessings, E

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  8. You are a wonder, Edie!

    Thanks for all the info. I can't wait until your "new" book is ready for download. I REALLY need it.

    Blessings,
    Jean

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    1. Jean, thanks so much for the encouragement! Blessings, E

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  9. Edie,
    You just added a great treasure of hashtags that will surely sharpen our twitter skills! What a blessing you are! So glad I went to Bootcamp this year. You are among one of my new friends i met there whose gift keeps on giving! Thanks so much!, Christian and poetry are among my most used hashtags. Now I have more options. You can believe I will keep your list handy!
    Thanks so much!

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  10. Glenda, getting to connect with you in person was a definite highlight of Bootcamp for me too! I'm glad this list is helpful. Blessings, E

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  11. Straightforward, practical, informative. Well done, Edie.

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    1. Janathan, thanks for the encouragement. So glad we'll be seeing you at Blue Ridge this year, it just wasn't the same without you! Blessings, E

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  12. Thanks for the refresher course. I'm using Twitter more frequently now. If it weren't for you, I would have given up on Twitter a long time ago! Question: Is it proper to send the same tweet (ex. about the day's blog post) at various times of the day or should it be reworded? Or should it only be sent out once? Does that make sense?

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    1. Sally, it is fine to send the same tweet multiple times. I usually try to reword it, but the majority of the time the same people won't be online so it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that you follow the 5 to 1 rule. For every 1 tweet about myself, I make sure I've posted 5 tweets about someone/something else. That always keeps my Twitter presence from being about me, me, me. Blessings, E

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