Twitter Tips for Beginners (2): Hashtags

There are now 100 million active Twitter users! Isn't that amazing!? We've tried, but haven't found a concrete way to determine how many of those are pet bloggers. Lots, though!

This is Part 2 of my series, "Twitter Tips for Beginners." Today we're starting a discussion on hashtags. As soon as I finish this Twitter series, we'll move on to Blog Hops, Blog Carnivals, and other fun blog stuff.

If you're new to Twitter, click here first, to start from the beginning. And FYI, while I am a cat, this Twitter series is for humans, too. We're all-species-friendly.

If you're one of my regular readers and are either new to, or not comfortable with Twitter, this is for you! If you're all over Twitter, feel free to either skip this post or proof it for me and let me know if I'm doing a good job with this. And send your Twitter-phobic friends and family on over... 

Hashtags
I think hashtags are the things that confuse folks the most on Twitter. A hashtag is a word - any word - on Twitter with the pound/number symbol (#) in front of it. When you add a # to the front of a word, you're categorizing your tweet, so it comes up when others are looking for that same subject.


Political Hashtags
There are hundreds of hashtags, and some of them come and go with popular topics of conversation. Right now, for example, there are thousands of people using hashtags like #occupywallst (or #ows, for short), #occupyLA, #getmoneyout, etc.

If you see a hashtag in a tweet that's piqued your interest, click on it and you'll see a list of all the twitterers who've added that hashtag to their tweets. In other words, you can view a list of all the tweets about that particular subject - in the examples above, the protests on Wall Street and around the U.S., and the "Get Money Out Of Politics" movement.

#p2 (Progressives 2.0) is sort of an umbrella hashtag for 'progressive' or liberal tweets, and #tcot (Top Conservatives on Twitter) and #GOP are hashtags commonly used by U.S. conservatives and Republicans.


If that was something you were interested in, you could indentify and follow folks whose tweets you liked by clicking on those hashtags.


Pet Blogger/Anipal Hashtags

There are lots of hashtags that pet bloggers and anipals use, but they warrant their own post, coming soon. Some examples are: #woofwednesday, #tortietuesday, #pinkpups (I'm an honorary Pink Pup), and the ever popular pet blogger/anipal Twitter Party hashtags: #pawpawty, #nipclub, and various pet birthday pawties, weddings, etc. There's also #pawcircle, a Twitter prayer circle for pets and their people who could use some love and light - and many, many others. 

Again, if you see a hashtag that looks interesting, click on it, and you'll see a lot of tweets you might like, and twitterers you might like to follow.


Hashtags for Everything Else
There are hashtags for every topic under the sun: Athletics - #Lakers, #MLB, Television - #Dexter, #Glee, Events - #BarkWorld, #BlogPaws, etc.


Heck, I'll start one right now: #TwitterTips. There. It's that easy. Click on it and you'll see all the tweets about Twitter Tips. Now I'll just add that hashtag when I tweet about my Twitter Tips posts. You can create a hashtag, too. 


What are you interested in? #knitting? #moms? #travel? #deals? It's easy to find link-minded (oops! that was a typo, but I like it!) souls out there who share your interests. Just put a hashtag in front of your topic and voila! It's a Twitter hashtag. If it's one no one else is using yet, just start using it. It will catch on!

Next up, we'll get more specific with the very popular weekly #FollowFriday and #WordlessWednesday hashtags.


Please send your friends, sisters, moms, and others who you know would like Twitter if they could just get their feet wet, to my original Twitter Tips for Beginners (1): Getting Started, which will lead them through the whole series. Eventually, I'll put it all together in a free e-Book. 


Questions, observations, suggestions? Please comment below. Thanks for reading!


=^..^=
 Cokes
@cokiethecat