Hashtags & How to Use Them

Written by Estee Hernández
Texas State University - San Marcos

It’s no secret: I love Twitter. It is an innovative tool that connects us both personally and professionally. (For a comprehensive Twitter how-to, please check out@BreakDrink’s Twitter guide for student affairs professionals.) But few of us know how to maximize our Twitter use. This blog post was designed to discuss hashtags (i.e., words or phrases that begin with #).

Brief history about hashtags: they were a by-product formulated not by the Twitter creators but its users, and it is a way to connect posts about the same or similar topics. Sometimes, people will create ironic hashtags like #smh (meaning shake my head) or #oomf (or one of my followers). When you first log onto Twitter, popular hashtags will appear on the right side of the page as trends or trending topics. This means that they are the 10 most frequently used search items or hashtags in the Twitterverse.

Some common hashtags are below:
• #ff or #followfriday: Used on Fridays, of course, and suggest a user worth following
• #sachat: Denotes tweets that discuss or relate to topics in student affairs
• #sagrad: Used in reference to higher education/student affairs graduate programs and their students
• #sajobs: Tweets about job postings and/or job searching advice and resources use this hashtag
• #wlsalt: Used by women in student affairs (learn more about this hashtag here)
• Discipline-related hashtags: #reslife for residence life/housing, #cuad = College Union & Activities Discussion, #acadv for academic advising, #greekchat for fraternity/sorority life
• #salatino: Developed by the NASPA LKC to share news and resources about Latina/os in higher education

When you use hashtags in your tweets, Twitter automatically creates links that will lead to a search page that generates the latest tweets that mention the hashtag. To view what this looks like in action, click on any of the above hashtags.

Now that you know what hashtags do, you may be thinking to yourself, “That’s great, but why use them?” Hashtags are a great way to share resources, news, and inquiries with other student affairs professionals via Twitter.

A good follow-up question might be, “How do we keep track of hashtags?” If you’ve clicked on any of the hashtags above, and you’re logged onto your Twitter account, you have the option of saving the search—just click the button on the top right corner. When you go back to your homepage, the hashtag will be saved under Searches for easy reference.

Applications like TweetDeck (a program for your desktop) and HootSuite (a web-based application) make it easy for you to keep track of hashtags. Both of these programs let you create columns for every hashtag you want to follow. I personally use HootSuite to manage the Twitter accounts that I monitor. This is what it looks like:





(I manage a few Twitter accounts…)

On the far right side of the picture above, you can see a column that was created to follow our NASPA LKC hashtag, #salatino. This is a close-up of what the column looks like:



Several of the aforementioned hashtags will host regular chats where a moderator will facilitate a conversation about relevant topics in our profession. The most popular hashtag that hosts a chat is #sachat, and you can learn more about it here. Think of it as a professional development round table that takes place online.

It could get difficult to follow all the tweets that get posted during chat time, as the backchannel may become saturated. I suggest using TweetChat during this time. TweetChat will refresh the page at regular intervals, and it also allows for you to post tweets (and will automatically add the hashtag to the end of your tweet).

Often, conferences will create a hashtag for attendees to use throughout sessions, receptions, and other programs. A month ago, I attended the NASPA Region 3 Summer Symposium where we used #naspa3 for the duration of the conference. This provided an opportunity for professionals who were unable to attend to also garner information and resources that were made available there.

Two final notes before I conclude:
1. If your account is private and you use hashtags, your tweets will not appear when users search a hashtag. This includes users that follow you. Deciding whether to make an account private or public is a whole other discussion, so this is just an FYI.
2. Refrain from “hashtag abuse.” Reserve the use of hashtags for times when tweets are beneficial to those who are following the hashtag. For a discussion about “hashtag abuse,” please reference @StacyLOliver’s blog post.

The discussion does not end here! The Twitterverse continues to grow as more people create innovative applications to maximize our social media use. Know that this post, although long, is not exhaustive, but it provides a good starting point for those who want to make the most use out of hashtags. Please remember to follow us at @tweetinglavoz, and use #salatino to engage about topics pertaining to Latina/os in higher education!

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About the Author:

Estee Hernández is a Residence Director at Texas State University-San Marcos. She earned her Master’s degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs from Baylor University, as well as her Bachelor’s degree in French. You may follow her on Twitter at @esteehernandez.