A while back I composed a post which gave some suggestions on which Twitter hashtags were the most useful for bookbloggers.

What is a hashtag, and what are they used for?

A hashtag is a label for content. It helps others who are interested in a certain topic, quickly find content on that same topic. In other words, it is a SEARCH TERM.

On Twitter, the pound sign (or hash) turns any word or group of words that directly follow it into a searchable link. This allows you to organize content and track discussion topics based on those keywords.

After all, Twitter and Instagram are just huge databases. They hold a LOT of content. If you want to search that content without going through countless results, use can use a hashtag search term to narrow those results.  For instance, if you want to see what people are saying about a certain TV show, put the title of show in the search box preceded by a hashtag.  Eg: #ThisIsUs

I’ve noticed that many bookbloggers use the hashtag #Review when posting their book reviews to Twitter. Although this is not technically wrong… you are not doing anyone any favours.

When you do this, anyone who searches Twitter with #Review will get reviews for books  BUT… they will also get reviews for televisions, health care services, children’s toys, automobiles, skin care products, insurance brokers, hotels, cosmetics, etc. etc. etc……

With a few extra keystrokes they can consolidate prospective searches.

Use #BookReview and the search will be much more efficient and user friendly. The searcher will ONLY get results for book reviews.

And if you want to narrow your search even further, use more than one search terms.

#BookReview and #thriller will get you a list of tweets that have BOTH these terms within the tweet.

I guess that is the retired library cataloguer in me coming out.  Why do a broad search when a more specific one narrows down the search results?

For instance if you visited your local library to find a book about training your spaniel you wouldn’t search for Animals–training (which would be too broad a search and you’d have to look through results on training cats, elephants, rabbits, etc.)

You would search for Dogs–training (the more specific search with refined results)

If the library didn’t put any subject headings in the catalogue record, no one would be able to find anything via subject.

If Twitter users don’t use hashtags in their tweets, this renders the tweet unsearchable. So, if you’ve just written the best review you’ve ever written – and you don’t add any hashtags – then no one will be able to find the link to your great review. And that would be sad…

My rant for today. Thanks for listening.

Do YOU use hashtags? Why/Why not?

Have you ever searched for content using hashtags?