At this week’s Tuesday Tips session, we dove into some of our favorite Twitter tips – hashtags and lists.
Hashtags
We like to break hashtags into three Twitter tips:
- Finding a pertinent conversation and joining it by using the associated trending hashtag – ex: breaking news will often have an associated hashtag, or a few, within minutes.
- Creating your own event or campaign hashtag to build awareness – ex: #GiveBigDoG is a great example of an event/campaign specific hashtag that is now trending and building awareness of the event.
- What I like to call the thought bubble hashtag. Though this kind isn’t necessarily going to be used as often by an organization, we certainly see individuals using some funny examples of these, think #EpicFail or #SorryNotSorry
I have heard talk of hashtags going away on Twitter, but I hope and believe they will stick around. Hashtags are a great way to build your audience and establish yourself as a leader within specific conversations.
Lists
Twitter lists are another great feature, and one that a lot of people don’t seem to take advantage of. Lists are a great way of organizing other users into specific lists. Let’s face it, if you follow thousand or even hundreds of Twitter users, it is hard to see who’s saying what. Instead, you will likely see the past few minutes of your newsfeed whenever you log in. Setting up Twitter lists can help you keep track of key players in specific arenas.
Instead of scrolling through your whole newsfeed, you can check your list of Sacramento Nonprofits, or local restaurants. Just a reminder, lists organize Tweeters, not Tweets – meaning you add a user to a list and get all of their tweets within that list.
Tip:
Twitter lists can be public or private and you don’t have to follow someone to add them to a list… so if you need to keep an eye on competition without them knowing, set up a private list and lurk away!
