The Insatiable Solopreneur™

Succeeding and Surviving as a Solopreneur

Archive for the tag “Hashtags”

28 Aug 2012
8 Comments

Do Hashtags Make a Difference? The Results of My Hashtag Experiment!

In an earlier post, I shared my thoughts about using hashtags on Twitter. Rather than completely dismiss their relevance Hashtag imageand effectiveness based on my own personal preferences and preconceived notions, I embarked on a little experiment to find out if they appear to make any difference at all in attracting Twitter followers.

The experiment

For 4 weeks, I proactively used hashtags in all of my tweets (Before the experiment, I only included them when retweeting people who used them in their original tweets).

The baseline

For the two months prior to starting the experiment, my net new twitter followers rang in at 52 and 51 (5.80% and 6.28% of my total followers at the time) in those two 4-week periods.

The results

After my 4 weeks of proactively using hashtags, I gained 61 net new Twitter followers (6.38% of my total followers).

The conclusion

Although I admit that my experiment was hardly scientific and possibly could have benefitted from some additional time, I have to conclude that hashtags don’t significantly impact the growth of your Twitter network.

I should note, however, that although the overall number of new followers may not be affected, it’s possible that engagement is. Twitter users who search for conversations based on hashtags might prove to be more relevant followers who will interact more readily and frequently with your tweets. But I’ll let you run and report on that particular experiment!

For now, I’m back to using hashtags only in retweets when they appear in the tweet before me – and sometimes not even then. With Twitter’s 140-character constraints, every space is prime real estate, you know!

What’s your take on hashtags? Have you found increased following or engagement when using them?

Posted in Social Media, Twitter and tagged , , , , , , ,
13 Jul 2012
4 Comments

Do #Hashtags Make a Difference?

I’m not a big hashtag user. Yes, I have used them, but generally that’s when I’m retweeting someone else and they’ve Hashtag imageused hashtags in their original tweet.

I guess the writer in me looks at them as a bit of an annoyance:

They’re an interruption. There you are just reading along and “Blammo!” There’s a hashtag disrupting the flow of the content.

They’re blatant attempts to get noticed. They seem so ostentatious. “Hey, look at me! I’m tweeting about something REALLY important!”

Ben Rimalower’s recent post Hastags are Over pretty much echoes my sentiments, but unlike Ben, I do still see some Twitter veterans using hashtags in their tweets.

Why?

One reason that makes me scratch my head in wonder…

I get that hashtags are a way of identifying that a tweet focuses on a specific topic or brand. People interested in that subject can search by typing the hashtag into the “Search” field on Twitter.com or filter by that hashtag in Hootsuite or some other dashboard tool. But when you’re using a specific word or phrase in the tweet anyway, there really seems to be no reason to make it a hashtag. Anyone interested in that keyword will find you regardless of whether or not you use a # in front of it.

One reason that makes sense…

Then there’s using hashtags for Tweet Chats. That one still makes sense. If you’re holding or participating in a live Twitter group discussion, a hashtag (like #smallbizchat for example) enables people to filter out everything else and only see tweets that are a part of the conversation. And by adding that hashtag to the questions or responses that you tweet during Tweet Chats, other participants will be sure to see your tweets.

Hashtag use: Necessary or not?

So it seems hashtags are both obsolete and highly relevant at the same time. Although I currently use them sparingly, I’m curious to see if they would in any way make a difference in how quickly or how slowly my base of Twitter followers grows. I’ve been tracking my weekly followers for some time so I’ve got a good baseline metric for comparison purposes.

Starting Sunday, I’m going to make an effort to add at least one hashtag to every tweet for the next 4 weeks. At the end of my little experiment, I’ll report back on how the new approach affected the growth of my network.

#Staytuned!

What about you? Do you use hashtags and are they helping you grow your Twitter following?

Posted in Hashtags, Twitter and tagged , , , ,

Post Navigation

%d bloggers like this: