Those of us that are a little older, remember when the hashtag was called the pound symbol. It was on the phone but had very little use at the beginning. In fact, it was never intended to be made available to the public. The official name for the # is the octothorpe. Octo refers to the number of points on the symbol and the Thorpe was used as a nod to the person that suggested using them for computer systems – Jim Thorpe. However, they were released to the public.
In the early 90s, telephone companies finally came up for a use for them as well as the asterisk (*). They would be used to do a variety of functions that the user could manipulate. For those of us that were around in the days before caller ID could use the * in combination with the numbers 69 and call a person back that we missed a call from. The pound sign was a way to forward the phone calls or other things related to the incoming line.
Flash forward to today, and many people don’t even use this symbol outside of social media. That is where we are going to land with this anecdote. The hashtag is now more mainstream than anything the octothorpe ever could have dreamed of being. While there are still some uses for this symbol outside of social media, it really is the flagship symbol for Twitter.
Now that we have given you a little background on the origin of the symbol, we can talk about all the ways that you can use this little guy to make sure you are maximizing your online reputation.
Purpose
Above we talked about how the hashtag had a limited purpose in the past. Now, we are going to talk about the purpose of the hashtag in the present. We did say that it was used for social media. However, we didn’t fully explain the role it plays on there.
In the past, you could not look for specific categories on the internet. Well, you could use a search engine and find out all you ever wanted to know about industrial solvents. However, what if you were looking for an industrial solvent spill that injured many people. The indexing for such a search was not readily available back then. Along comes Twitter. Twitter discovered a way that people could index the articles that people wanted to read about. In essence, they reinvented the octothorpe and dubbed it a hashtag.
By using this symbol, the users of the social media platform could categorize the things they were talking about. Basically, it was a chat room (again a term from the days of dial-up modems) without the chat room. By simply adding this symbol to the 144 characters that you wanted to write about, others could find your comment or post without having to look for hours for it. It wasn’t long before businesses discovered the potential this had on other social media platforms. Today, you can enter this symbol in nearly every social media platform, and it will be recognized within it.
Online Reputation
Now to the reason that you have all come here. You want to know how the hashtag can be used in the world of online reputation management. The answer is simple. You can use the hashtag and apply it to whatever you want people to read. This doesn’t necessarily have to be about your company or brand. You can find things that others are writing about and put your two cents in. This will get your name out there on several different topics. When others read what you have to say, they can comment or like the post as well. In addition, you can garner followers by simply staying up to date on what is trending.
This is very easy to do in any social media platform. They all have a section of what is trending. Simply navigate the name or business that you would like to get more exposure and comment, like and post to your heart’s content. However, there are some things that you are going to want to keep in mind when you are posting on social media. We are going to cover them below.
Dos and Don’ts
As with anything that is related to social media, you are going to want to make sure you conform to the guidelines of each individual platform. This can be a daunting task. Just make sure you read the terms of service prior to using a platform. As a general rule, you can take a look at what we are providing you below.
In order to maximize your online reputation exposure, you are going to want to start out with doing a little bit of research. Don’t just guess or use hashtags you think will start trending. Take a look at what is trending and then construct your post to fit in that box. This may sound like you are just following the crowd, but you are simply going where the people are reading. Most platforms will offer up suggestions when you start typing the hashtag out. Pick the best one that suits your needs. Even if it is slightly different or spelled funny. Social media has a language all its own. It is best to use this to your advantage instead of trying to go against the grain.
On the opposite side, there are going to be things that you want to avoid. One of those is overusing hashtags. If there are two or three hashtags on a similar topic, you are free to use those. If you go much past three, people will not like this. You will simply be conveying to the readers that you are not interested in sticking to the topic and are trying to spam. They will view you as such and likely not follow you. Additionally, you may be reported for going off topic. This can lead to the opposite of what you wanted to happen. Meaning, you may lose validity on the social media and therefore not be seen by as many people when you post.
Conclusion We hope that you enjoyed this post about the humble octothorpe. To understand the use, we had to take you through the history. Moving forward, we hope that you can use the tips we gave you on utilizing the hashtag and make your brand flourish.