Hashtags - What are they and what's the fuss?

You’ve heard about them. 

You’ve seen them.

You may have even tried to USE them.

You’ve probably seen them OVERUSED. #afullsentencehashtag

What on earth are they???

Well…let me explain.

I’ll leave the jargon right out of it too.

A hashtag is a word, any word or string of words, that has a # symbol in front of it. 

Anyone can decide which word or topic they want to use as a hashtag. 

You’ll find hashtags used on places like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google + and Tumblr (just to name a few) and the idea is that, if you post a post and include the hashtag in it, then when you go to the hashtag stream, you will see all the other posts on, let’s say Facebook, that everyone else has posted, who also used that hashtag in their post.

Let me give you an example to make that even clearer. 

 I use #BuildTheTribe on some of my posts and my mission is to build up a whole bunch of useful tips on how you can build your tribe on social media. So rather than you having to scroll through my Social Vibes page to find all the great tips, all you need to do is type #BuildTheTribe into the search bar at the top of your Facebook page.

Then what you will get is a whole stream of posts that have used that hashtag.

Have a go right now.

See it?

Cool huh? :)

The other way to quickly access the hashtag stream is to click on the hashtag when you see it. Have you noticed that the word is blue when it’s a hashtag? That’s because it has turned into a link, like the same as you would see a link to a page on the internet. 

You will notice there are people you don’t know in that hashtag stream. This is your opportunity to check them out, like a networking event for Social Media :) You might like what they do and want to connect. Boom. Virtual Networking.

Like anything it’s very easy to use once you know how. So go ahead and click on the next hashtag you see..you won’t break the internet! 

Happy Hashtagging folks :)