Micky Brian: The #HASHTAG

Have you realised the use of hashtags on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the others? Do you know its significance aside being used for fun on these social media? Did you know that a lot of people only use hashtags for its highlighting feature? This, therefore, accounts to the abuse of hashtags...but...hey, do not worry. Get into the fun zone. Just that don't #spam #with #hashtags. Don't over-tag a single post or tweet. (Best practices recommend using no more than 2 hashtags per post or tweet.)

A hashtag is a word or an unspaced phrase prefixed with the number sign ("#"). It is a form of metadata tag. Words in messages on microblogging and social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Instagram may be tagged by putting "#" before them, either as they appear in a sentence (e.g "The weather is #hot")

Hashtags provide a nice way of viewing other related posts in a single window. For instance, a hashtagged post "The weather is #hot" gives me the opportunity to view other posts which have relation to "hot". You can give it a try now on your social media. In the contest of hashtagging, you make your post available to the general public beyond your friends, meaning other people can view your post at any time. If you post or tweet with a hashtag on a public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your post or tweet.

So the question comes that when is one required to use hashtags? People use the hashtag symbol # before a relevant keyword or phrase (no spaces) in their posts or tweets to categorize those posts or tweets and help them show more easily in Facebook, Twitter or other social media Search.
Clicking on a hashtagged word in any message shows you all other posts or tweets marked with that keyword. Hashtags can occur anywhere in the post or tweet – at the beginning, middle, or end. Hashtagged words that become very popular are often Trending Topics.

If you want to create a special hashtag for an event or campaign, select one that hasn't been used before and remind everyone to use it in related tweets. Be sure to include the hashtag in any promotional materials. Make it informative but short — for example, Visit #MickyBrianBlog all the time.