In my first post about hashtags, I covered five reasons you want to use them. But what are the best ways to incorporate hashtags into regular twitter use? And what tools do you use to manage them?Hashtags are the easiest way to search for tweets on twitter. When you click on a hashtag in the twitter interface (or any twitter client), it automatically brings up a listing of all the recent tweets that contain that hashtag. There are three ways that hashtags can help you follow relevant content.
Community - This past summer, I was on the organizing committee for the first annual Social Capital Conference, Ottawa's first social media conference. We set up our twitter account, @SoCapOtt, and then decided to use #socapott as a hashtag as well. All of our tweets about the conference went out with that hashtag in it and it was a huge success in raising awareness and building an audience. That audience turned into a genuine community through the interactions at the conference. We're carrying on with #socapott meetups and our attendees know to check the hashtag periodically for news.
Chat - Twitter chats use hashtags to follow a conversation for a set period of time. There are many regular twitter chats and many, many more occasional chats. If you want to connect with like-minded people or others with a common interest, twitter chats are a great way to do so. You'll find many new people to follow and likely gain some valuable insights from the chat session. Most twitter chats happen using the web-based tools TweetChat or TweetGrid. My advice? Try them both - everyone has a different preference. Also, be prepared for large chats to go very fast. That's okay. You don't have to catch everything. You can always use a tool like Twapper Keeper to archive the tweets from the hashtag. General wisdom is that doing one regular twitter chat a week is a good frequency.
Note: If you're going to do a twitter chat, you might want to let your followers know when and for how long before it starts so you don't get unfollowed. The volume of tweets from twitter chats can be overwhelming to some people if it starts clogging up their stream.
Conversation - My biggest argument to companies for why they should be involved in social media is that the conversation is going on - with or without them. Hashtags are a useful tool for monitoring the conversation. In my day job, I monitor one major hashtag and about half a dozen other additional hashtags. All are relevant to the organization I work for and all have constant chatter about various aspects of my organization's services. Watching these hashtags gives me the ability to see what people are saying whether I follow them or not. It's a goldmine of information that can be used to make note of and respond to issues.
Monitoring hashtags on twitter.com isn't the most friendly experience. If you plan to watch any hashtag regularly, I highly recommend you use a twitter client like Tweetdeck (desktop) or Hootsuite (Web-based) for easier management.
What are some other uses of hashtags that you've seen? Have you seen any really creative uses of hashtags?