Recently I had a conversation with a long time social media friend at a swanky social media summit in NYC about the common failure of people who abuse hashtags. Twitter of course fully embraced the hashtag; a convention that pretty much spawn out of common usage on that social network. Further Twitter’s built-in search engine allows you to search and filter tweets based on hashtags. In fact hashtags are so ingrained into the common psyche of the every user that the Twitterverse would not be the same without them.
Fortunately LinkedIn and Google plus also support hashtags, which is interesting considering that initially Google blocked them by default as part of their search algorithm. However when their own entry into the social sphere initially floundered they updated the system accommodate them. Recently LinkedIn also added support for the simple yet elegant method of marking content under a particular theme or classification.
If you are unfamiliar with the beauty of hashtags then you probably haven’t ventured outside the realm of Facebook. Unfortunately, for whatever reason Facebook elected not to utilize hash tagging which is truly unfortunate. However the social media giant will do things in it’s own way which may end up being it’s biggest failure. That is for an entirely different discussion.
The problem with hashtags is their rampant abuse by many self proclaimed social marketers and experts. These individuals tend to overload a status update with so many tags that the content is rendered pointless. For instance consider the following tweets:
Suppor @opliberation1 #shutdownSEMA #shutdownSEMA #shutdownSEMA #shutdownSEMA #shutdownSEMA #shutdownSEMARead this wptv.com/dpp/news/regio…
— anastasia cDc ♛ (@angelRejected) February 22, 2013
The above tweet is mired in a mess of numerous repetitive tags. Honestly filling your update with with so many duplicate hashtags reduces the retweetability of the update. It is also considered obnoxiously spammy and does not help a tag to become a trending topic.
So what’s so wrong with this next tweet? Well for starters the #sharing tag is really pointlessly general and not very useful. However I’ll cover general hashtags later in the article. The #smqueue tag is equally pointless because if someone is interested in searching for your twitter ID they will use your ID not a hashtagged version. So the only useful tag in this tweet is #SocialMedia, albeit overused.
What is smqueue? Read more ~ smq.tc/TsBD7R #Socialmedia #smqueue #sharing
— smqueue (@smqueue) February 22, 2013
Of the three only this one conveys useful information with the hashtags, however as useful as they are you have to agre that there are a lot of #hashtags. I would argue that 7 are too many.
Gothic Black Pearl & Red Crystal Bead Woven by ElementalKarma etsy.me/SBYlwM #etsy #jewelry #trendy #shiny #bling #goth #pretties
— Elemental Karma (@ElementalKarma) February 22, 2013
How would we improve this tweet? I would drop the #shiny, #bling & #pretties hashtags. I would also weigh very carefully the use of the #trendy hashtag and analyze it’s current usage via twitter search. I would convert the #etsy hashtag into a mention @Etsy as this will improve the tweeter’s outreach. In addition it will yield a more focused search query. Finally I would either change the ‘by ElementalKarma’ to ‘by @ElementalKarma’ or replace it with ‘on @Etsy’ because this make more sense and will improve the retweet ratio of the update.
Remember that because there is now ownership of hashtags anyone may use them how they wish. This is one of the reasons I recommended the #etsy one be changed to @Etsy. Let’s consider the #trendy hashtag previously mentioned. If you insist on using a generalized term then you need to perform a search to consider how others may be also using that term. Fortunately you can glimpse the terms usage with Twitter’s search however you should perform this check often as tweet association will be constantly .
What are your feelings about hashtag abuse?
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Hey even Zombies need to communicate…
I never use hashtags. I am a Zombie of course, but even in my human
form, I still do not use hash tags. I think it is because so many
people overuse them that they look cheesy to me. But I always was a
rebel LOL