Your Community on Twitter
I recently wrote about Twitter's NEW (community) hashtags. Ending on, will people understand the difference?
Currently people do not understand.
".. I’ve begun hashtagging just about all my tweets in all communities now since they’re hard to find."
😑
".. I think when ppl search for HASHTAGS they should at least see them WHEREVER they are as long as it’s public."
🤦
Local not Global
If you run a Twitter community YOU need to understand that hashtags in your community are "local" not global. Meaning they will only show other tweets from within YOUR community.
Use that knowledge to decide on a hashtag strategy for your community. Then apply that strategy to your community tweets and communicate that strategy to your community members.
For example, if I owned the Dogs of Twitter community I would be using a dog-breed hashtag with each community tweet and be encouraging members to also "tag" the dog-breed in their community tweets. Giving people a way to view community content by dog breed.
Keep your strategy simple, logical and useful. Make sure your moderators are all onboard and your community members should start to understand and join in.
In the "Köln" community I am adding a city-borough hashtag (example: Ehrenfeld), as well as a media type (video or photo) and a tag for food etc. There's also a "where am I" game tag.
Soon I'll write an article on the related blog to communicate that strategy and encourage others to join in.
It will take people time to learn how to use hashtags in Twitter communities.
They will make mistakes. So will you.
Keep your strategy simple, logical and useful. Make sure your moderators are all onboard and your community members should start to understand and join in.
If this has been helpful please follow me on Twitter. If you have questions ask in the comments, or here on Twitter.
