Tip of the week #2

The power of #hashtags (i.e. hash tags) on Twitter… So, it’s no surprise to my little virtual world that I’m home sick. What do I do to relax? Create social networks and blog, of course. This morning, not being able to sleep I noticed that two tweets came through talking about an evacuation at JFK airport (from people actually at JFK). Remembering that I belong to Twitter I “retweeted” (or repeated a tweet) with #jfkevac in the message.

Not ten minutes later people were sharing messages and updates (even before major media outlets–seriously check out the blog which resulted shortly after posting) including  the #jfkevac hash tag in their messages. See what ensued – #jfkevac.

Okay, you do have to use Twitter for the hash tag feature to work. (It’s important to know.) Once you do, you’ll find many ways to make the function work for you. A few suggestions:

• Taking notes at a conference via Twitter (Ask everyone around you to do the same thing and then you’ll all have access to ALL notes)
• Promoting major events on Twitter (i.e. conference, meeting, etc…)
• Tracking a message (see how far of reach you’re getting)
• Communicating during national and natural disasters (which is how the hash tag function began)
• Promoting a favorite (i.e. Web site, musician, writer, etc…)

IMPORTANT NOTE: You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.

If you have other uses for hash tags, include them in the comment section for all readers to enjoy.