I read an article on getprismatic.com that teaches its readers how to use hashtags. I skimmed through the article not expecting to learn too much, being that I’ve been hash tagging since the craze started; but I was very wrong.
The article did not necessarily teach me how to hashtag, but it did open my eyes to the importance of hash tagging and what benefits it provides journalistically.
According to the article, “They basically help people search for & find content based on a keyword or phrase.” The article also notes that Twitter started the concept of the hashtag but now most major social media platforms utilize it in one way or another. For example, it is proven that posts with 11+ hashtags on Instagram are most likely to attract viewers. This is not necessarily the case on Twitter though.
The article gives statistics that show that tweets with hashtags are almost twice as likely to be retweeted as those without hashtags. The article says that a twitter user is 55% more likely to be retweeted when using at least one hashtag. It also notes that tweets that use more than two hashtags drops engagement by 17%.
Long story short, a hashtag is not just a pound sign with some words smashed together; they are useful tool for social media users. I think this is crucial for journalists to know because social media is such large source of news today.
skylerfbrandt 