Hash tags are an interesting and somewhat underused (for the casual user anyway) feature of Twitter that you should know about if you are using Twitter for marketing purposes. A hash tag is simply a way to specify a particular keyword in a tweet. For example, if you post a tweet about gardening Marketing Consultants and want to emphasize the word “plant,” you would make it into a hash tag by placing a “#” sign in front of it. So your tweet might look something like this:
This is the best #plant for your house:
Now when someone searches for tweets that contain the “plant” hash tag, they will see your tweet (for a while at least, until it is pushed way down by other tweets that contain the same keyword). An example of a web site that people use to research tweets or Twitter users by hash tag is hashtags.org. Hashtags.org displays trend data for particular hash tags. If there is a particular hash tag related to your industry that is showing a strong upward trend, then using that hash tag in some of your tweets can expose your messages to more people.
It is also possible that Google or other search engines could give high visibility to a web page that contains tweets or other data for a particular hash tag, which gives you another roundabout way of getting seen. For example, in keeping with our example above, Google could decide to highly rank the hashtags.com page about the hash tag “plant.” If you have recently tweeted using the “plant” hash tag, then someone clicking the link from Google might see your tweet on the subject.
Hash tags are merely one small component of using Twitter, which is itself one small component of a larger, overarching Internet marketing campaign. The more knowledgeable you are about the intricacies of using Twitter, or any other marketing tool, the more adept you will be at using it and the more benefit you will receive.