Twitter Hashtag Lists - How to Find, Design, Use Hashtags Effectively

Hashtags are phrases or words preceded by the # symbol.

They have become very popular on Twitter for organizing and search for message related to a topic.

For example fans Justin Bieber fans could get more information by using #Bieber to find fellow Beliebers.

Journalists use #datajournalism – Focused on methods and advice for finding data.

#journalism #jobs – Resource for finding journalism and media jobs.

#jpeeve – Where journos vent their journalism pet peeves about style, cliches, grammar, and other news topics.

This year on Super Bowl Sunday, the company Audi displayed a new commercial on the big screen and TV featuring a hashtag, #ProgressIs. This was used to encourage viewers to complete the phrase “Progress Is” prompt on Twitter using a hashtag for the chance to win a prize. Landrover has used a similar advertising strategy in their ads.

Though the idea took awhile for Hashtags to catch on, they have quickly taken off on both Twitter and offline, primarily since 2010.

People have started using hashtags to add humor, context, underling and emphasis and interior monologues to their messages. The Hash can be a more sophisticated, toungue-in-cheek verbal version of the winking emoticon and other symbols tweens use to add commentary in their 140 letter space.

The hashtag is a useful shorthand in the highly compressed environment and this compression spills over into other forms of communication.

Using a hashtag is also a way for someone to show that they’re part of a certain scene or topic group, and to use or deploy a new hashtag you need to understand the culture.

At the nest level Hashtags are a simple way to catalog and connect tweets about a specific topic that can be easily searched for. They make it easier for users to find additional tweets on a particular subject that are likely to be much more specific and focused that a simple word search.

Hashtags are also commonly used by event organizers and at conference as a method of keeping all the various tweets about the event or conference in a single stream.

Hashtags have also even been used to coordinate emergency updates. During the 2007 wildfire disaster in San Diego, the tag #sandiegofires was applied to single out tweets about the wildfire.

How to Utilize Existing Hashtags

There are a huge variety of hashtags already established that you can join. A list of some of the more commonly used one in various areas is shown in the table. You need to be careful, however, that the way you use the existing hashtags is consistent with both your information or brand and that used by the group already using the tag.

You can find them simply by trying various searches with the Hash symbol to the front of likely keywords.

Unfortunately, as hashtags have become more popular and widely used, they have been targeted by spammers. You should not use a hashtag on a tweet that is unrelated to that tag topic. Also you should not stuff your tweets with a heap of hashtags willy nilly or will be guilt of spamming the list.

HashTag Lists

The are various sites that provide access to lists of Hashtags like hashtags.corg, Twubs, and What the Trend, which lists the more popular hashtags by country and topic.

How to Start Your Own Hashtags

Hashtags can be very helpful to track social media advertising campaigns or create memes and community identity for the product among your core customers.

The first step in making a new hashtag is deciding on the keyword itself. Try to pick something that people will remember, that is meaningful, short and easy to spell.

Then all you have to do is to start using it and promoting it. Make sure your tweets containing the hashtag are substantial and contain valuable information.

To promote your tag use it in other social media channels, such as email newsletters, your blog or advertising campaigns.

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