If your #tweet looks like #this, you're #doingitwrong

Posted on 12 September 2013

Hashtags have two purposes.
The most useful is to organize tweets by subject. This helps other people interested in the subject find it, and helps facilitate a wider conversation.
This can be something geographical like #cityofPG (Prince George) or #yyz (Toronto), or it can be a category like #bcpoli (British Columbia politics) or #TIFF13 (the Toronto International Film Festival).
The other use of hashtags is to provide some form of commentary on your tweet. Think of it as a parenthetical aside or a footnote or even an emoticon. You might Tweet a joke and add “#justkidding” to indicate your tone should be taken as humourous.
If you are not using it for either of those reasons, there is no point.
For example, #why would you do #this?
There is no conversation happening around the word “why”.  There is no community of people talking about “this”. It is a random string of tweets that have no relation to each other. It also provides no context to what you are saying. “Why” holds the same meaning as “#why” and is less annoying to look at.
If your #tweet looks like #this, you’re #doingitwrong.

Filed under: how to, social media