What is a hashtag?
Hashtags are organizing words, phrases, letters, or numbers (never punctuation) added to your social media posts which are preceded by the pound (#) sign. In most social media platforms, when published, they are turned into hyperlinks that readers can click upon to look at all content of that platform with the same hashtag or track conversations happening across platforms.
Hashtags are frequently used to associate content with a category or an event. For example, tweets from the Kelsey Museum might be tagged as #archaeology, while an organization like LSA might host a series of lectures asking participants to use the same hashtag.
LSA has a standard set of hashtags (link coming soon).
What makes a good hashtag?
That depends.
If you are trying to include your content into a larger worldwide conversation, using a hashtag that represents the field of study (i.e. #politics, #biomechanics, #throwbackthursday) might work best. When inviting others to participate in an event or conversation you may need to create your own.
Hashtags are generally short (<12 characters), specific, and memorable.
[button style=”btn-default btn-lg” type=”link” target=”false” title=”UMSocial Hashtag Info” link=”http://socialmedia.umich.edu/strategy/#hashtags” linkrel=””]
