The problem is, you only have those 140 characters for your message, the shortened URL you've created, and those hashtags. That's where you start shortening words changing "for" to "4", "thousands" to "1000s," to to "2," you to "u," "with" to "w" and the like.
Now, your tweet about Henry Louis Gates jr. may have nothing to do with #bia, outside of him being black. But you know you're going to find a lot of people there who will be interested in a tweet about Gates.
There's the potential to abuse the use of hashtags. Some right
wingers will tweet to #p2 and #topprog making nasty, unpleasant remarks
or attacks on progressive people, issues or values, and progressives
say nasty things to conservatives using the #tcot tag.
The
problem is, when you are doing searches on hashtags or keywords, you
can't block these people (People, please give a crowdsource answer that
I can. That'll be a gift.) So you end up with a lot of what we call, in
yiddish, drek-- garbage or crap that you have to winnow through. But
people DO keep using hashtags and following them.
How's it worked for me? In a year of tweeting over 600 messages, Igathered about 800 followers. In the two months since I finally figured out hashtags, I've added over 400 more.-That's a huge difference. In the last week, I gained about 100 on one account and tripled my followers on my @bottomupmind twitter account.
Twitter is a very bottom-up tool. Using hashtags, anyone can reach a lot of people. You don't have to be a celebrity with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers..
Once you start using hashtags and shortened URLs linking to your own content or content tips, you'll start realizing how you have to edit your tweets to max those 140 characters. I've opened a few more twitter accounts for different website projects ( www.twitter.com/robkall is my main one for political writing, and is my main one for my work with bottomup new media consulting and writing. But I also do www.twitter.com/fhlt for my futurehealth.org website and www.twitter.com/posexp for my www.positiveexperience.com website.
I could have gone with positiveexperience for a twitter name, but that uses up soooo many characters, I chose the shorter one, giving me 12 extra characters to work with.
Today, after seeing a press conference in which Martha Coakley, MA AG announced she would be running as a candidate for Teddy Kennedy's US senate seat, I checked to see how many tweets about it had been made. I discovered, looking at the most recent 40, that there was only one hash tag among ALL the tweets and that was for #oakley-- clearly someone attempting to start a new hashtag precedent. So I posted via my new media username, the following tweet, which was an observation of the absence of new media savvy.
Search on "Coakley" 2 min after announcing Sen run only 1 #hashtag in 1st 40 results. http://bit.ly/hashtg new media social media #newmedia
Give hashtags a try. You'll soon realize that not using them is like having a Corvette with a four cylinder engine. Twitter's a powerful tool, but you have to know how to use it. Mastering hashtags takes you further along the path-- a path continually littered with new third party tools and technologies. I'm hoping commenters will add more tips on how to more effectively use hashtags and related third party twitter apps.
A few more thoughts. To promote this article, I tweeted, using my @bottomupmind account:
bottomupmindHow 2 Use #Hashtags2 boost reach & followers http://tr.im/u6ay #tcot #p2 #topprog #cav #iranelection #michaeljackson #paris #crowdsourcing
That was a bit of a mistake. My plan was to post it first with
bottomupmind and then retweet it with my @robkall account, to get them
both exposure. I'll do it anyway, but it's not as good.
Also, I used #cav #iranelection #michaeljackson #paris- hashtags
because they were among the top trending tags, so I figured I'd reach a
lot of people that way. We'll see how much flack I get. Also, note that
I didn't leave a space between hashtags and 2. That could ruin search
results for that tag.
OKay. I changed the hashtags a bit for the second tweet, using other top tags.
robkallRT @bottomupmind How 2 Use #Hashtags 2 boost reach & followers http://tr.im/u6ay #tcot #p2 #topprog #tdf #harrypotter #france #crowdsourcing
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