When NOT to use Hashtags

Excerpted from Blogadera


Lately it seems like every tweet that comes across the twitter stream is piggy backing on at least one #hashtag if not more. I want to point out some ways people misuse hashtags while thinking they’re oh so twitter savvy.

Some people ride hashtags as a way to catch a trending topic to get more views for their tweet. That’s just gaming and after doing this too much you are sure to lose followers.

Some folks make their entire tweet composed completely with #hashtags, “#hey #guys #marketing #here, #are #you a #marketeer #too”

Sometimes you see bloggers use marketing hashtags for their tweets not considering that if they are trying to reach the general user (which make up the 99% of potential readers) you might be saying to them you are a marketing/business blog. So don’t use the marketing hashtags so often, it’s all about perception and you don’t want to appear as though you only belong to this small circle of marketing folks. Using these hashtags is like preaching to the choir so you should not use them so often if you want to appeal to a larger audience, a larger audience who could care less about your blogs marketing involvements.

If you are going to do these things, create a user friendly twitter account that is just about the content on your blog and your activities. Save the marketing #hashtagging for your marketing dept or staff twitter account.

These are just a few of the ways we’ve seen how bloggers think they are doing something good for themselves but more than likely it is really swimming upstream. If a common regular twitter user, someone who isn’t part of the savvy “social media” uber blogger twitter community, sees that you use these hashtags all the time, it says to them that all you talk about is marketing and business stuff and therefore your blog must be the same way. So look to using #hastags that are relevant to them.

We don’t want to call out the various hashtags out there because they are important to have but just wanted to point this out to many of the blogs using these. They paint a picture about your stream so keep that in mind.

One of the better examples of a blog that steers clear of these is @tikitikiblog while they could be dropping #hashtags left and right, they don’t. Actualy this makes their stream that much more appealing to the general user.