Way Back When
The use of the hashtag, from my research, appeared in 1988 when early internet users began including them in messages. They were used to group messages, images and videos into categories.
Fast forward 19 years and hashtags reappeared on Twitter when Nate Ritter experimented using the the hashtag #sandiegofire. Some credit Chris Messina, a social technology expert, with the very first hashtag that appeared on Twitter in 2007.
Regardless of who’s on first, what’s on second and I don’t know who’s on third hashtags have since become one of the most widely used tools on the internet with many popular social networks such as Facebook, Google+, Instagram and others adapting hashtags as way to let users more easily communicate.
Use Real Time Hashtag Apps For Community Events, Contests, Sales & Marketing Campaigns and To Have Social Media Conversations.
Get Creative
Hashtags are one of the most useful and versatile features on many social media platforms and bring in audiences interested in your brand that can help spread information about related products and services. Hashtags can be brand and campaign specific, used with posted content and to follow what is trending. Hashtags are used to regularly hold chats to keep targeted audiences informed and for companies to get actual feedback.
Get creative and add to your social media fan base and onsite community. If you take the time to design hashtags that fit your business you can engage your fans with a variety of incentives, contests, events and other thought inspired ways to keep them coming back, sharing and commenting.
Another creative way to utilize hastags is to incorporate a hashtag page onto your website. Check out One Big Broadcast’s Social Post and Hashtag app as an option that gives you the ability to harness any number of hashtags in real time as they are posted at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These can meld with your community on your own web site to stimulate your followers to view, create and share their content and the share results automatically via social networks to attract visibility to build your community.
Harness yours and other people’s hashtags from social channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to stimulate users and visitors to create content and interact with your brand to build interest excitement and community.
Tracking Hashtags
Hashtags can be tracked and analyzed to provide great insights on how people are interacting with your brand, business, product, service, event or blog and give you insight into conversations going on within social networks.
Keyhole is a one of many sites where you can get real-time tracking and historical data for hashtags from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Or for some other tools that can help you launch, track and analyze hashtags across social networks, see this article posted by Social Media Examiner “5 Hashtag Tracking Tools for Twitter, Facebook and Beyondâ€
Attracting more leads and increasing sales is the bottom line and hashtags are a cost effective tool to add to your toolbox. Make up your own hashtags. Promote your own brand. Display these feeds on your own screens - even stadium or conference screens during events to get everyone in on the action.
This infographic by Quicksprout will give you some more helpful advice on the benefits of hashtags and different ways in which to use them.