How To Work Twitter: Part 3

By now, you know most of what there is to know about Twitter.  But, there’s more!  Twitter gives you some tools to get yourself, your content, and your following noticed.  Let’s go over one big one now.

For me, the most important tool is the ‘hash tag’.

What is a hash tag?  First, let’s define a ‘tag’.  According to Wikipedia, a tag is “a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the item’s creator or by its viewer, depending on the system.”

In plain English, a tag is an electronic keyword that you assign to a web page, blog post, digital image, or other online asset that makes it findable during a web search.

Soooo, what is a hash tag?  A hash tag is the way you tag your Twitter posts so people can search and find them categorically.  The ‘hash’ part of the term comes from the ‘#’ symbol, which is often called a hash symbol.

Here’s how it all works.  Let’s say you are the communications and marketing person for a nonprofit that deals with funding educational support programs for homeless children.  Assume that you are looking to use Twitter to gain some exposure for your agency, as well as try to find other people and organizations in the country who might share similar missions or values.

Each time you post something on Twitter, you should be hash tagging your posts. Here is a sample of something you might post:

TeachTheHomeless:  1 in 10 U.S. Children are on the streets and not in school. Visit http://www.TTC.org to help. #homeless #education

Ignore the fake stats and the made-up organization and look to the hash tags.  The point of adding those tags is simple…searchability.  Now, anyone who searches #education or #homeless will be able to find your post.  The more people who can find your content the better!

But, hash tags aren’t just for searching.  After you post something using a hash tag (or see someone else’s post using a hash tag), you’ll notice that the hash tag itself becomes a link.  Click on the hash tag link and you are taken to a separate feed.  This feed is made up of every single Twitter post that contains that hash tag.  Popular hash tags make for very active feeds, and often times entire discussions take place by way of these hash tag feeds…much like a live instant message conversation.  Check it out and get familiar with the functionality.

Finally, just hash tag often.  And, keep your eyes open for  hash tags other people are using.  There are tons of them, and you can use as many as you can fit into the 140 character maximum.  I like to write down new ones as I see them, and then apply them to my posts as often as I can.

Have questions?  Leave a comment or email me!

Why Moving Too Fast On Social Media Can Lose An Audience

I learned a very valuable lesson as a result of my last blog post, and it might just be one that I won’t read too much about in the ‘how-to’ articles and e-books on social media. This is a lesson you have to learn by making the mistake.  But, maybe my blunder can help you avoid this social media pitfall.

I was very proud of my last blog post, entitled “Finding Success On Twitter”. If you haven’t read it, I ran down the functionality of Twitter and the strategy I employed to quickly gain some followers and make some great connections. I was so proud because I had mastered the tool. My very triumphant-sounding blog post was full of the terms and jargon that I had learned, and I cut right to the core of what you have to do to find success on Twitter.  I sounded like an expert (at least in my mind!)

So, what mistake did I make?  Two days ago I was having a conversation with my father-in-law about my blog.  He is a very accomplished entrepreneur who is also in the process of learning and embracing all that Marketing 2.0 and social media has to offer for business.

He said to me, and I paraphrase, “John, your blog is great.  I enjoy reading it and I am learning a lot.  But, your last entry about Twitter was so full of jargon that I couldn’t follow it and I learned very little.  If I wasn’t your father-in-law, I probably would have stopped following you.”

Talk about a wake up call!  Upon re-reading the ‘Twitter’ blog post, it was painfully clear that my approach did not take into account the audience who I had originally set out to attract.  Someone who knew very little about Twitter would not have received any benefit from that post.  Two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have learned everything from that post because I had no idea what things like a “hashtag” or a “mention” were.  I wasn’t mapping my route to learning social media like I had set out to do.  I was just telling everyone what I learned and expected them to just understand how I got from point A to point B.

Ultimately, what I learned from this exchange is this: as easily as you can find an audience, you can lose them if you don’t bring the type of content you promised.  It is apparently very simple to get off track and confuse your audience.  I was thrilled to have so many new followers to my Twitter feed and my blog.  So thrilled was I that I forgot to give them what they were looking for in the first place!  If they were customers, I would have seen them walking out my door as quickly as I saw them walk in.  If I was to employ this kind of strategy with my non-profit, the plan would probably fail.

So, now it is time to get this blog back on track.  My next post will interpret my previous post about Twitter.  And, future posts will focus less on being an expert and more on becoming an expert!

Many thanks go to Tom Wolf at identityanddestiny.com for the valuable feedback.