How to use #Hashtag

Hashtag, the latest entry to find space in everyone's tweets, Facebook updates and other social media platforms surely is a very dominant baby of Social Media. These days i find everyone using hashtags irrespective of the fact that they know how to use it or not. Also, there is a major chunk of population who is unaware as to what hashtags are, what do they do and how to use them... esp, those who are novice to social media.

It is almost next to necessary to know the effect that hashtags can have on our social media communication, how they are so integral to the way we communicate online. Hashtags actually were born on twitter and then made their way to facebook and then gradually to other forms of social media.

What most of you would not know is.. word 'Hashtag' has made its way into the Oxford English Dictionary along with selfie recently. So, now its an official english language word.

What is a Hashtag?

Hashtag is nothing but a word preceded by a pound (#) sign. It allows that word or group of words to form part of a link chain which can be accessed by clicking on that hashtag. It allows you to have a widespread reach and more significantly helps you track discussion topics based on those keyword. 

Any user writing a tweet or a facebook update with a particular hashtag would automatically flow into the discussion topic. In 2007, developer Chris Messina, proposed that twitter should start grouping topics using hashtag. To her and everybody's surprise, twitter rejected her idea. 

Later that year, citizen journalists began tweeting using a hashtag to make people aware of San diego fire break out and the practice of using hashtag has taken off since then.

How to use a Hashtag?

Firstly, it is of utmost significance that 'no space' should be part of words written with a hastag. For e.g. writing "#I Love Beach" would make no sense and will have no use. Proper way to write the same is "#ILoveBeach".

You can definitely write numbers in a hashtag. For e.g. "#5waystowin". However, punctuation marks are an absolute no-no. Also, please remember that pound (#) sign is to be used before a word or group of words and not after.

Hashtags begin only with pound sign and not any other. Writing @ instead of # on twitter makes you reach out to person's twitter handle and not the discussion topic.

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Hashtags have been so successful off late that they are being used for marketing purposes, political gains, spreading a news, movie reviews, celebrating moment of glory etc. It will be nothing short of being foolish to think that hashtags are for the people who want to sound cool and wanna be.

Using more hashtags is the new way to communicate.