Blog Archives – Miss Write

There are a un-countable blogs and forums where you can find hashtags for writers (e.g. Book Cover Cafe), so Google until your heart’s content. 

Here are my top six if you’re desperate to get started:

#writerwednesday or #ww For networking with other writers – only for use on a Wednesday 

#ff This means ‘Follow Friday’ – a great way to recommend and find other Tweeps you might be interested in following. 

#fridayreads This is a weekly hashtag (used on Fridays, of course!) to show the world what you’re reading at the moment. It can also be used to promote your book, if you can encourage your fans to include your Twitter name in their #fridayreads tweets! 

#mustread Loved that book? Want to recommend it to others? Why not finish your tweet with this hashtag?

#amwriting This can be any kind of writing (e.g. song writing, letters, recipes). It’s not novel or short story specific, which I can find frustrating, but it’s interesting as a networking tool. 

#writingprompt Great to get the creative juices flowing.

Let me know what you think in the comments box below, where you, as a writer, stop by Twitter. Have a great week – oh, and find me @MissWriteUK!

Lou x

Yes, I’m a writer. But another passion (and day job) of mine recycling. I thought I’d combine the two today to show you how to get the most out of your hashtags on Twitter, and particularly if you’re into recycling.

If you’re a writer, stay tuned. I’m going to blog a nod to us hard working scribblers very soon, since this blog is, and will remain, centred around creative writing.

I’ve been very active on Twitter for about 4 months now. One of the best tips I can give new Twitter users is to (relevant) hashtag your tweets until you run out of characters -140 max.

What’s a hashtag?
**Quick shout out and thanks to Andy White for explaining it so clearly to me in the early days**
Hashtags are a method of joining conversations on Twitter. They are words or phrases used in tweets, which have the ‘#’ symbol placed at the beginning of the word. There are no spaces or punctuation in them. When you click on one (normally highlighted in green), Twitter reveals a stream of everyone’s tweets which include that particular hashtag.

An example of this is #pmqs for the BBC’s Prime Minister’s Questions. This hashtag quite often trends on Wednesdays due to the weekly TV coverage live from the Houses of Parliament. Searching for #pmqs, you can see all the tweets where people on Twitter (‘Tweeps’) are posting about PMQs. Comments and moaning, jokes and quotes – politics is a popular topic on Twitter.

Ok, I understand that. So, how can I use a hashtag to my advantage?
Hashtags are a great way to learn about subjects you’re interested in (e.g. recycling), to get more exposure, build relationships, and therefore increase your own following. As mentioned above, hashtags are a link to a conversation, to be included in tweets that are relevant to a specific topic. So, if you’re interested in recycling, you could tweet something short like

Found a place to #recycle my #tetrapak cartons for the first time today – #proud!

This means your post will be visible in the three hashtag conversations of #recycle (talk of all things recycling), #tetrapak (type of rubbish – yes there are hashtags for rubbish!!)  and #proud (Tweeps pleased with themselves on a plethora of achievements). All three hashtag streams will feature this tweet. That’s exposure for you!

Please note: Hashtags are Twitter limited; they DO NOT work on Facebook, but I have noticed it’s quickly becoming a method of showing emotions, like with emoticons: #smile and #grr are popular. These do not link into the Twitter conversations though.