I was reluctant at first, but Twitter has become my go-to social media platform. (If you haven't yet,
follow me now.) Unlike some other social media sites, posts made on Twitter (aka "tweets") are immediately live for all your followers. There's no need to build up likes and comments in the hopes that people who already follow you
might see your post in their news feed. The downside is that after a tweet is made, it falls further and further down the update list as more and more tweets come in.
Herein lies the real power of Twitter: the hashtag. A
hashtag is a keyword preceded by the # symbol that can be used to categorize a tweet and make it easier to find. By clicking on a hashtag in Twitter, someone can immediately search for all the other tweets out there tagged with the same keyword. For example, if you want to keep up to date on a particular subject (like beer), you can use a social media management tool such as
TweetDeck or
HootSuite to monitor that hashtag. Or, if you're a blogger like me,
sharing your post on Twitter with the appropriate hashtag makes it infinitely easier for people to find your content.
The hashtag has become such an important part of social media marketing that hashtags are now part of all the major social media channels: Facebook, Google+, Instagram, and Vine, to name a few.
So, what are some of the most commonly used hashtags used in the craft beer community? I'm glad you asked:
