#How #Does #This #Thing #Work #?
Don’t know what hashtags are or what they are for? You’re not alone. Hashtags are an important aspect of connecting on Twitter, so stick around and learn the why and the how.
As I finish up my love letter to authors who are working to become independent of the traditional publishing world, I’m watching the buzz around hashtags more closely than ever. I’ve created a simple way to teach people to use hashtags, even if they are new to the whole Twitter thang.
The hashmark: # — connected to a word with no spaces, creates a hot link on Twitter. That’s vital. You’ll need that. The word with no spaces is the tag, so we call this structure a “hashtag.”
You’ll see lots of hashtags as you wander and wade the rivers on Twitter. One I’ve been watching recently is the hashtag #PubTips, which was created in 2009 by @RachelleGardner for agents and editors to discuss the business and offer publishing tips. Cool!
I’m creating these series of Twitter posts as part of my new hashtag book marketing system, and I use hashtags so people can find me when they’re searching certain words. To me, a “pubtip” was just that — a tip about publishing. But there are subtleties to be noted, and as I mentioned, this one is for agents and editors. It has its distinct value, and it is distinctly different from the planet I’m populating. The next step was easy, once my brain opened up to it.
Enter the hashtag ePubTip. That one little letter, so terribly common in our language, takes us across the galaxy from one planet to the other. Agents and editors are part of the planet I’ll call “traditional publishing.” There are other names for it, such as “legacy,” but you’ll find out in Beyond Bestseller what I think about the use of that term.
The planet for #ePubTip is all about that letter E. We are authors going digital, and the electronic reader is the device our audience uses, including iPhones, iPads, Kindle and many others.
Authors learning to live on the Indie Planet of publishing can follow along on Twitter, even if they don’t know a thing about how “all this” works, by searching #ePubTip. Join in. Use the hashtag, and help strengthen the collective intel for our future full of readers and royalties.
Suzanna Stinnett
Brainmaker on Twitter