ACFW Virtual Conference: Day 2, Hashtags

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by:  Staci Stallings

Hashtags

Hashtags take the Twitter game to the next level.  Basically a hashtag is a searchable list of tweets on Twitter about a certain subject.  Let’s say I’m looking for information on recipes, but I don’t know anyone on Twitter who is talking about recipes.  Easy!  All I have to do is do a search for:

#recipes

Or

#recipe

Instantly, I will get a whole list of tweets that have been “tagged” #recipe or #recipes

From the searcher’s side of things, hashtags are great.  From a marketer’s side, they are gold!

Let’s say someone is looking for a Christian romantic suspense.  They can either know Tweeters to follow, OR they can do a search.  What terms might they search for?

#Christian

#Christianfiction

#Romance

#romanticsuspense

#suspense

#Christfic

#ChristLit

#inspy

#inspyromance

WOW!  If there are 50 tweets returned on each hashtag, this person has a veritable library at their fingertips.

You want to get your tweets on these lists.  That way, even if someone has never HEARD of you specifically, if they are searching the lists, they will see your tweets.

There is one caveat to this and that is the dreaded Top Page vs. All Page on Twitter.  Top Page tweets are those tweets that Twitter recognizes as “important.”  No one is 100% sure of the algorithm they use to determine who gets on the Top page and who gets on the All page, but you want to be on the Top page.

Some ways we have found to accomplish this include: tweeting to that hashtag regularly, getting people to click the links on your tweets, and being someone others find interesting or click-worthly.

I’m not going to give you a formula for getting on the Top page because I don’t know it.  I do know it is very worthwhile to work to get your tweets on multiple Top Pages for hashtags. 

There are many, MANY hashtags (with more being created each day).  To do a search for relevant hashtags, search for say #Christianfiction, then look at the OTHER hashtags people have used on tweets using this hashtag.  See if you can find others that might be relevant to your tweets as well.

Here are a few to get you started (in addition to these, there are many more at this link: http://www.stacistallings.net/twitter-hashtags-what-they-are-how-to-use-them/ )

#fiction

#Amazon

#Kindle

#kindletweets

#AmazonKindle

#AmazonLikes

#BNNook

#Nook

#ACFW

Putting it altogether, a whole sell tweet would look like this:

“A book about forgiveness and hope…” DEEP IN THE HEART http://ow.ly/mFEzI #inspyromance #Christfic

You could make a new tweet (by changing the hashtags) like this:

“A book about forgiveness and hope…” DEEP IN THE HEART http://ow.ly/mFEzI #inspy #romance #Christianfiction

Or you can make a new tweet by changing the hook like this:

“A gem in the genre…” DEEP IN THE HEART http://ow.ly/mFEzI #inspy #romance #Christianfiction

Run these several hours apart and throw some others in between and now you’ve got the beginnings of a Twitter campaign!