Thursday, February 5, 2009

Hash(tags) that wouldn't get Phelps in trouble

Corporate TweetsImage by Irish Typepad via Flickr

Twitter basics for professional growth - Hashtags

Twitter can be a very useful resource for PR professionals once you get the hang of it. For beginners, I recommend starting with the short video, Twitter in Plain English. Once you have a handle on tweeting, you can start thinking of putting the power of the Twitterstream to work for you.

You can Learn a Lot from a Dummy
(and smart people too)
There is a wealth of knowledge and networking opportunity hidden to most people that do not dig deeper into Twitter. You can dig up this trove of resources and conversations by using hashtags.

According to the Twitter Fan Wiki, hashtags are "a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets."

If you've spent any time in the space you may have seen the # symbol followed by word(s). In Twitter a hashtag looks something like this:


A few hashtags that PR people might find interesting to search:
  1. #PRadvice - thoughts, conversations, suggestions and advice involing public relations
  2. #PRintern - for the student, recent grad, or recently laid off journalist interested in PR, this hashtag is a good source for leads to PR internships
  3. #journchat - (one of my favorites) is best described by its tagline, "an ongoing conversation between journalists, bloggers and PR folks" (more)
The above are just some highlights, there are many more. Hashtags can help organize Twitter and have as many uses as you can think up; from the silly or serious to the conferences and cocktails.

Your Turn...
Have you found an interesting PR-related hashtag? Have you started using hashtags? Do you find them useful?

BTW, here is the hashtag for "Phelps."

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