What is a hashtag?

Many business owners have heard of hashtags, and have seen them used in news and pop culture references. In fact, many companies choose to launch Twitter campaigns that use hashtags to relate back to a particular topic. But, before your company can progress into marketing a small business on Twitter, it's important to understand the fundamentals.
A hashtag consists of a pound sign (#) followed by a word or phrase with no spaces in between. The word or phrase that you choose should relate directly to the theme or topic of your tweet. For example, if you post on your company's account a tweet that reads: "Just planted a new tree outside the office!" you could include a hashtag such as "#happyearthday," "#gogreen" or "#greenbiz."
"A Twitter hashtag ties the conversations of different users into one stream, which you can find by searching the hashtag in Twitter Search or by using a third-party monitoring tool such as HootSuite," explains Hubspot's  Magdalena Georgieva in a recent blog post. "So, if Twitter users who are not otherwise connected talk about the same topic using a specific hashtag, their tweets will appear in the same stream. In that way, Twitter hashtags solve a coordination issue and facilitate a conversation. Popular hashtagged words often become trending topics - topics so many people are talking about that they are a 'trend.'"
In addition to an SEO campaign or direct mail campaign, a Twitter campaign can get your company a lot of online exposure - if it is executed correctly. For businesses that are not very familiar with how Twitter works, partnering with a small business marketing consultant like MarketShare Communications is a great way to get started with social media marketing. Your company will be #winning before you know it.