Baratunde Thurston spoke at a Web 2.0 convention recently about the use of hashtags on Twitter. Baratunde is a standup comedian who works for The Onion and is a twitter genius. You will see in the video he has started joke twitter accounts and developed followings for each of 2000+ in two weeks through the brilliant use of hashtags.
If you don’t know – hashtags in twitter are the things you see with the pound sign before them (i.e. #swineflu, #howblackareyou, etc.). Hashtags connect you with people who don’t follow you. Search a hashtag in Twitter search and you will stumble upon thousands of conversations, you may want to jump in.
Deeper Meaning
What interested me most about Baratunde’s talk was this use of “crowdsourcing” information. Using hashtags to tap into the ideas of the crowd. It’s a way to start a conversation in 140 characters or less. This is an opportunity for you to tap into the masses and see what they have to say.
Experiment
Create a hasthag for yourself and start the conversation around it. See what kind of response you get back. Make it a question or a bold statement and hashtag it frequently. As the conversation grows it will breath a human aspect into your brand 140 characters at a time.
Watch the video, try it for yourself, tell me how it goes. Mention me – I will jump into the conversation! @jakelarson.
