Recycling Hashtag Special – Miss Write

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.