Hashtags.  #wtf are they?  Why is searching for #puppies different than searching for puppies?  And why is my blog asking for search terms in addition to tags?  I’m not stupid, but every article explaining hashtags is like a million pages long and P.S. people–using the word “metadata” to explain them is like, thank you for nothing.  Admittedly, I’ve been lazy wrapping my mind around it, but only because I don’t have a lot of free time and want to spend it doing things I enjoy.  Although I really did not want to think about hashtags on a Friday (#thisisunfortunate), to eat, one must learn how to chew (#questionableanalogies).

This morning, I asked my good friend/hashtag guru to explain it to me for the 10th time.  And then, the revelation.  In general,

—>hastags flag a topic.<—

Essentially, searching for puppies will bring up anything that contains the word/variations of the word puppies.  #puppies will return anything flagged as relevant to the topic of puppies.  This is kind of life changing as I have been throwing #s around like candy from a detonating pinata, and skimping on search terms like they’re haunted.

Some interesting trends have been reported (June 2013):

1. Twitter–
   1. tweets with hashtags get 2xs more engagement than tweets without;
   2. tweets with 1 or more hashtags are 55 percent more likely to be retweeted;
   3. when you use more than 2 hashtags, your engagement actually drops by about 17%.
2. Instagram–
   1. posts with 11+ hashtags get the most interaction.
3. Facebook–
   1.  Less is more.  Too many hashtags = less interactions.
4.  Google+–
   1. I will try to understand this on another day.

Recommended sites to find hashtags:

• hashtagify.me
• RiteTag
• Tagboard
• Twitalizer
• Trendsmap

Free at last,

BTB