Hashtag all one word

A few weeks ago, my cube mate turned to me and asked this question. I stared at him for a minute, then shrugged. He Googled it instead, and got the answer immediately: Hashtag is one word. Thank goodness we cleared that one up.

Hashtag is just one of the many social media terms that have become common in everyday conversation. The AP Stylebook now recognizes the new meanings of words such as «mention» and «reply,» and even has an entire entry on social media guidelines that includes how journalists should vet sources found through Facebook. In 2011, the words «retweet,» «sexting» and «cyberbullying» were added to the Oxford English Dictionary. And everyone knows what it means to LOL.

Last October, actor Ralph Fiennes made headlines by claiming the truncated text of sites like Twitter is eroding the English language. Is he right — is social media destroying words and, as a result, the way we write? Or is social media-centric language simply a reflection of today’s growing technologies and rapidly evolving methods of communication? Perhaps social media even has the ability to improve the way we write.

How Language Changes

Language is constantly changing as people are heavily influenced by their surroundings and use new methods of communication. William Shakespeare often created new words by altering the originals or simply inventing them from thin air — laughable, luggage, grovel, puking and eyeball among the long list — and spreading these words through theatre. Today, new words in the English language catch on more quickly, with social media making content immediately accessible to everyone.

How Social Media Has Changed the Way We Write

Not only are new words changing the way we speak and write, but the way these words are shared through the Internet and social media has affected our writing, as well. As a copywriter for a Chicago SEO firm, I have a strong understanding of how the Internet influences the words on a Web page. I constantly find myself writing more carefully just to fit in a few keywords like «New York cosmetic dentist» or «veterinarian website.»

Just as SEO makes writers think more carefully about their word placement, the 140-character limit of Twitter makes us work harder at being concise. Isn’t clear, succinct, efficient copy every editor’s goal as she marks up the page with red ink? It’s easy enough to get your point across in 1,000 words, but getting it done in just 140 characters is a different kind of challenge.

And then there are the links shared through Twitter and Facebook. The headline might be truncated, but if it’s well-written, it will draw readers in and get them to click through to the heart of the content. Social media isn’t dictating the way we write, but rather, it’s being used to promote good writing. The more powerful and effective the content, the more viral it gets. Twitter has taught writers how to successfully market their content while reaffirming the impact of quality writing.

What about Blogs?

Another word formed from the rise of technology (Web log), the blog has turned the written word into a conversation. Today’s writers are creating blog posts, complete with bios and profiles so their readers can see the face behind the words, and encouraging comments and feedback. The informal, personal tone of many blogs helps writers find and grow their own voice.

Blogs and social media have created a community for writers that supports the creation of valuable, interesting and inspiring content. The change in language is inevitable — we will always be developing new words into our language as long as the world around us continues to progress. How we use and share those words is what really affects the way we write.

Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, product launches, sales funnels, targeted traffic, and website conversions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash symbol, #. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Tumblr as a form of user-generated tagging that enables cross-referencing of content by topic or theme.^[1] For example, a search within Instagram for the hashtag #bluesky returns all posts that have been tagged with that term. After the initial hash symbol, a hashtag may include letters, numerals, or underscores.^[2]

The use of hashtags was first proposed by American blogger and product consultant Chris Messina in a 2007 tweet.^[3][4] Messina made no attempt to patent the use because he felt that «they were born of the internet, and owned by no one».^[5][6] Hashtags became entrenched in the culture of Twitter^[7] and soon emerged across Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.^[8][9] In June 2014, hashtag was added to the Oxford English Dictionary as «a word or phrase with the symbol # in front of it, used on social media websites and apps so that you can search for all messages with the same subject».^[10][11]

Origin and acceptance[edit]

The number sign or hash symbol, #, has long been used in information technology to highlight specific pieces of text. In 1970, the number sign was used to denote immediate address mode in the assembly language of the PDP-11^[12] when placed next to a symbol or a number, and around 1973, ‘#’ was introduced in the C programming language to indicate special keywords that the C preprocessor had to process first.^[13] The pound sign was adopted for use within IRC (Internet Relay Chat) networks around 1988 to label groups and topics.^[14] Channels or topics that are available across an entire IRC network are prefixed with a hash symbol # (as opposed to those local to a server, which uses an ampersand ‘&’).^[15]

The use of the pound sign in IRC inspired^[16] Chris Messina to propose a similar system on Twitter to tag topics of interest on the microblogging network.^[17] He posted the first hashtag on Twitter:

How do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?

— Chris Messina, («factoryjoe»), August 23, 2007^[3]

According to Messina, he suggested use of the hashtag to make it easy for lay users without specialized knowledge of search protocols to find specific relevant content. Therefore, the hashtag «was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages».^[18]

The first published use of the term «hash tag» was in a blog post «Hash Tags = Twitter Groupings» by Stowe Boyd,^[19] on August 26, 2007, according to lexicographer Ben Zimmer, chair of the American Dialect Society’s New Words Committee.

Messina’s suggestion to use the hashtag was not immediately adopted by Twitter, but the convention gained popular acceptance when hashtags were used in tweets relating to the 2007 San Diego forest fires in Southern California.^[20][21] The hashtag gained international acceptance during the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests; Twitter users used both English- and Persian-language hashtags in communications during the events.^[22]

Hashtags have since played critical roles in recent social movements such as #jesuischarlie, #BLM,^[23] and #MeToo.^[24][25]

Beginning July 2, 2009,^[26] Twitter began to hyperlink all hashtags in tweets to Twitter search results for the hashtagged word (and for the standard spelling of commonly misspelled words). In 2010, Twitter introduced «Trending Topics» on the Twitter front page, displaying hashtags that are rapidly becoming popular, and the significance of trending hashtags has become so great that the company makes significant efforts to foil attempts to spam the trending list.^[27] During the 2010 World Cup, Twitter explicitly encouraged the use of hashtags with the temporary deployment of «hashflags», which replaced hashtags of three-letter country codes with their respective national flags.^[28]

Other platforms such as YouTube and Gawker Media followed in officially supporting hashtags,^[29] and real-time search aggregators such as Google Real-Time Search began supporting hashtags.

Format[edit]

A hashtag must begin with a hash (#) character followed by other characters, and is terminated by a space or the end of the line. Some platforms may require the # to be preceded with a space. Most or all platforms that support hashtags permit the inclusion of letters (without diacritics), numerals, and underscores.^[2] Other characters may be supported on a platform-by-platform basis. Some characters, such as & are generally not supported as they may already serve other search functions.^[30] Hashtags are not case sensitive (a search for «#hashtag» will match «#HashTag» as well), but the use of embedded capitals (i.e., CamelCase) increases legibility and improves accessibility.

Languages that do not use word dividers handle hashtags differently. In China, microblogs Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo use a double-hashtag-delimited #HashName# format, since the lack of spacing between Chinese characters necessitates a closing tag. Twitter uses a different syntax for Chinese characters and orthographies with similar spacing conventions: the hashtag contains unspaced characters, separated from preceding and following text by spaces (e.g., ‘我 #爱 你’ instead of ‘我#爱你’)^[31] or by zero-width non-joiner characters before and after the hashtagged element, to retain a linguistically natural appearance (displaying as unspaced ‘我‌#爱‌你’, but with invisible non-joiners delimiting the hashtag).^[32]

Etiquette and regulation[edit]

Some communities may limit, officially or unofficially, the number of hashtags permitted on a single post.^[33]

Misuse of hashtags can lead to account suspensions. Twitter warns that adding hashtags to unrelated tweets, or repeated use of the same hashtag without adding to a conversation can filter an account from search results, or suspend the account.^[34]

Individual platforms may deactivate certain hashtags either for being too generic to be useful, such as #photography on Instagram, or due to their use to facilitate illegal activities.^[35][36]

Alternate formats[edit]

In 2009, StockTwits began using ticker symbols preceded by the dollar sign (e.g., $XRX).^[37][38] In July 2012, Twitter began supporting the tag convention and dubbed it the «cashtag».^[39][40] The convention has extended to national currencies, and Cash App has implemented the cashtag to mark usernames.

Function[edit]

Hashtags are particularly useful in unmoderated forums that lack a formal ontological organization. Hashtags help users find content similar interest. Hashtags are neither registered nor controlled by any one user or group of users. They do not contain any set definitions, meaning that a single hashtag can be used for any number of purposes, and that the accepted meaning of a hashtag can change with time.

Hashtags intended for discussion of a particular event tend to use an obscure wording to avoid being caught up with generic conversations on similar subjects, such as a cake festival using #cakefestival rather than simply #cake. However, this can also make it difficult for topics to become «trending topics» because people often use different spelling or words to refer to the same topic. For topics to trend, there must be a consensus, whether silent or stated, that the hashtag refers to that specific topic.

Hashtags may be used informally to express context around a given message, with no intent to categorize the message for later searching, sharing, or other reasons. Hashtags may thus serve as a reflexive meta-commentary.^[41]

This can help express contextual cues or offer more depth to the information or message that appears with the hashtag. «My arms are getting darker by the minute. #toomuchfaketan». Another function of the hashtag can be used to express personal feelings and emotions. For example, with «It’s Monday!! #excited #sarcasm» in which the adjectives are directly indicating the emotions of the speaker.^[42]

Verbal use of the word hashtag is sometimes used in informal conversations.^[43] Use may be humorous, such as «I’m hashtag confused!»^[42] By August 2012, use of a hand gesture, sometimes called the «finger hashtag», in which the index and middle finger both hands are extended and arranged perpendicularly to form the hash, was documented.^[44][45]

Co-optation by other industries[edit]

Companies, businesses, and advocacy organizations have taken advantage of hashtag-based discussions for promotion of their products, services or campaigns.

In the early 2010s, some television broadcasters began to employ hashtags related to programs in digital on-screen graphics, to encourage viewers to participate in a backchannel of discussion via social media prior to, during, or after the program.^[46] Television commercials have sometimes contained hashtags for similar purposes.^[47]

The increased usage of hashtags as brand promotion devices has been compared to the promotion of branded «keywords» by AOL in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as such keywords were also promoted at the end of television commercials and series episodes.^[48]

Organized real-world events have used hashtags and ad hoc lists for discussion and promotion among participants. Hashtags are used as beacons by event participants to find each other, both on Twitter and, in many cases, during actual physical events.

Since the 2012–13 season, the NBA has allowed fans to vote players in as All-Star Game starters on Twitter and Facebook using #NBAVOTE.^[49]

Hashtag-centered biomedical Twitter campaigns have shown to increase the reach, promotion, and visibility of healthcare-related open innovation platforms.^[50]

Non-commercial use[edit]

Political protests and campaigns in the early 2010s, such as #OccupyWallStreet and #LibyaFeb17, have been organized around hashtags or have made extensive usage of hashtags for the promotion of discussion. Hashtags have also been used to promote official events; the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs officially titled the 2018 Russia–United States summit as the «#HELSINKI2018 Meeting».^[51]

Hashtags have been used to gather customer criticism of large companies. In January 2012, McDonald’s created the #McDStories hashtag so that customers could share positive experiences about the restaurant chain, but the marketing effort was cancelled after two hours when critical tweets outnumbered praising ones.^[52]

In 2017, the #MeToo hashtag became viral in response to the sexual harassment accusations against Harvey Weinstein. The use of this hashtag can be considered part of hashtag activism, spreading awareness across eighty-five different countries with more than seventeen million Tweets using the hashtag #MeToo. This hashtag was not only used to spread awareness of accusations regarding Harvey Weinstein but allowed different women to share their experiences of sexual violence. Using this hashtag birthed multiple different hashtags in connection to #MeToo to encourage more women to share their stories, resulting in further spread of the phenomenon of hashtag activism. The use of hashtags, especially, in this case, allowed for better and easier access to search for content related to this social media movement.^[53]

Sentiment analysis[edit]

The use of hashtags also reveals what feelings or sentiment an author attaches to a statement. This can range from the obvious, where a hashtag directly describes the state of mind, to the less obvious. For example, words in hashtags are the strongest predictor of whether or not a statement is sarcastic^[54]—a difficult AI problem.^[55]

Professional development and education[edit]

Hashtags play an important role for employees and students in professional fields and education. In industry, individuals’ engagement with a hashtags can provide opportunities for them develop and gain some professional knowledge in their fields.^[56]

In education, research on language teachers who engaged in the #MFLtwitterati hashtag demonstrates the uses of hashtags for creating community and sharing teaching resources. The majority of participants reported positive impact on their teaching strategies as inspired by many ideas shared by different individuals in the Hashtag. ^[57]

Emerging research in communication and learning demonstrates how hashtag practices influence the teaching and development of students. An analysis of eight studies examined the use of hashtags in K–12 classrooms and found significant results. These results indicated that hashtags assisted students in voicing their opinions. In addition, hashtags also helped students understand self-organisation and the concept of space beyond place.^{[clarification needed][58]} Related research demonstrated how high school students engagement with hashtag communication practices allowed them to develop story telling skills and cultural awareness. ^[59]

For young people at risk of poverty and social exclusion during the COVID-19 pandemic, Instagram hashtags were shown in a 2022 article to foster scientific education and promote remote learning.^[60]

In popular culture[edit]

During the April 2011 Canadian party leader debate, Jack Layton, then-leader of the New Democratic Party, referred to Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s crime policies as «a [sic] hashtag fail» (presumably #fail).^[61][62]

In 2010 Kanye West used the term «hashtag rap» to describe a style of rapping that, according to Rizoh of the Houston Press, uses «a metaphor, a pause, and a one-word punch line, often placed at the end of a rhyme».^[63][64] Rappers Nicki Minaj, Big Sean, Drake, and Lil Wayne are credited with the popularization of hashtag rap, while the style has been criticized by Ludacris, The Lonely Island,^[65] and various music writers.^[66]

On September 13, 2013, a hashtag, #TwitterIPO, appeared in the headline of a New York Times front-page article regarding Twitter’s initial public offering.^[67][68]

In 2014 Bird’s Eye foods released «Mashtags», a mashed potato product with pieces shaped either like
@ or #.^[69]

In 2019, the British Ornithological Union included as hash character in the design of its new Janet Kear Union Medal, to represent «science communication and social media».^[70]

See also[edit]

• URI fragment
• Tagging
• Mentioning a user’s profile by using @ tagging in blogging.
• Webring, an early-web decentralized mechanism to link websites with a common theme
• Folksonomy
• Social bookmarking
• Models of collaborative tagging
• Web 2.0

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Wikipedia internal hashtag search engine – for hashtags used in edit summaries
• Veszelszki, Ágnes 2016: #time, #truth, #tradition. An Image-text Relationship on Instagram: photo and hashtag. In: Benedek, András; Veszelszki, Ágnes (eds.): In the Beginning was the Image: The Omnipresence of Pictures: Time, Truth, Tradition. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, pp. 139–150.
• Infografika Hluboká Historie hashtagu
• Infografika Historie hashtagu
• Growing hashtags: Expanding outreach on Wikipedia
• Wikimedia hashtag search

Hashtags on Instagram start with the symbol «#», which is followed by one or several words. You don’t need to put space and special characters between them. Users often add underscore to separate words, though. 

Emoji and numbers are also included in Instagram hashtags. Sometimes the tags consist only of them.

Each Instagram hashtag is a clickable link. It leads to a page with the content marked with this hashtag.

Instagram hashtags are one of the ways to get more followers. This is because more people can see your posts. Once your posts get to a tag page, not only your followers can see them, but everybody on Instagram.

Instagram users can find content on an interesting topic using hashtags. It may be a place, an event, people or animals, anything. Whatever they are interested in, a hashtag for it is already there. They only need to type it in the search bar.

Each hashtag on Instagram has its page. All photos and videos posted with the tag can be found there. There are two ways to get to such pages:

You will be directed to the hashtag page on Instagram (the third screenshot).

You can use Instagram hashtags under your posts too to make them appear on the pages, thus more people will see them. 

You can follow a hashtag on Instagram. Then, you will see posts with the tag in your feed. So you won’t miss trends, you will be aware of what your competitors post and receive inspirational ideas regularly. 

Official Instagram information on the feed formation when you follow hashtags on Instagram is out of date. We can tell only from our personal experience on what happens when you follow a tag:

There are three tabs on an Instagram hashtag page: 

People usually use Instagram hashtags under posts and Reels. Sometimes people also add them in bio and Stories. Let’s look closer at each case. 

In bio, people add their own Instagram hashtags. It may be the name of your brand, current contest or marathon. More detailed information about hashtags in Instagram bio you can find in the article about how to create a business bio.

You can add hashtags in the caption or first comment. The place affects a profile’s development. The number of tags is also an influence on reach and engagement. You can add up to 30 hashtags on Instagram. But don’t try to add «as many as you can».

The best number of hashtags and their place depend on your Instagram account size. Both parameters we examined in the article where to add tags. The study was based on Socialinsider and Quuu research.

Here we leave a short table.

Find the number of your followers in the first column. From columns on the right, you can know where it’s better to put Instagram hashtags, whether you should hide them and how many to add.

Examples of hidden hashtags with emoji: 

Upload content. Type «#» and start writing a word. Choose hashtags from the list that Instagram suggests. 

Go to the comments section. Type «#» and the beginning of a word. Choose from the suggested list of Instagram hashtags.

Not a Story turned up on an Instagram hashtag page when we were writing the article. At the same time, there is no official information that the content won’t be shown on the pages anymore. So let’s look at how to hashtag on Instagram Stories. 

You can add up to 30 hashtags as text and one hashtag sticker to an Instagram Story. Unlike posts, we haven’t got any reliable information about the tag’s influence on a profile development. So experiment and monitor your rivals. 

Tag as text:

Repeat steps 1-3 to add one more hashtags. Unfortunately, you can add only one hashtag on Instagram Story in one go. Otherwise, you will have only the last tag as an active link. 

Hashtag sticker: 

You can hide hashtags in Instagram Stories. No one knows for sure how it affects the promotion yet. All we can do is to experiment. 

If you think a tag is hard on the eye or make a secret of promoting your account with tags, put a sticker over:

OR

Make the text or sticker as small as possible. To do this, tap it with two fingers and move them towards each other. Then, drag the sticker or text to where they will blend with the background. 

Look at the examples below. Can you see hashtags in the second screenshot? We can’t. But they are there.

You can add no more than 30 hashtags to Instagram Reel captions when posting the videos. No information has yet been provided about the optimal number.

Write «#» and a word in the caption after uploading a video. 

If you turn on «Also share to feed», the tags are copied to the preview description.

Add hashtags when your audience is the most active. This time the users scroll their feed and visit a Recent tab more often. This will contribute to your growth on Instagram.

If your content is at the top of the tab at that time, it gets more reach and engagement. And if your photo and video are good, you get more likes and subscribers.

You can know where the target audience is most active in Insights.

You can add Instagram hashtags not only when posting. They can be changed in captions and comments afterwards. In Reels, you can add and delete tags only in the comments. Stories are not to be edited, you have to reupload them if you want to use other hashtags.

We noticed that Instagram posts get to the Recent tab no matter how much time passes from posting to hashtagging. You can change IG hashtags gradually, not all in one day. Then, a post will always be at the Recent tab top on the pages of hashtags you added to the post recently. But remember about the limits — there can be no more than 30 tags under a post.

Not only new Instagram hashtags you can add. Delete a tag from the caption, save the publication. Open the editing menu again and write the same tag. It works alike with tags in the comments. Delete and add again a comment with tags. The post will be at the top of the tag’s Recent tab. 

You can write tags in any language. You can even write them in several languages at once. For example, in English and the native language of your target audience. 

English as an additional language for tags increases Instagram reach best of all. According to Statista, 26% of users use it. Besides, the language is recognized as an International language. Even people with minimal English skills use it for hashtag search. 

It is worth recalling, Instagram hashtags should also be written in the local language. Then, any user from your target audience can find you. 

You can check how popular among authors an Instagram hashtag is. Type a tag in the search and you’ll see the number of posts with it. 

Instagram  hashtags are roughly divided by the number of posts with them.

Do not strive to post only with high-frequency Instagram hashtags. Popular among authors tags are not the same as popular among your target audience tags. A big number of photos and videos on a tag page doesn’t mean the content is in demand on Instagram. 

For example, authors have posted 75.4 M posts tagged #garden, and 87.6 K #gardendesignideas posts. It doesn’t mean users search #garden more often. Design ideas for their own gardens particularly may interest them even more. Unfortunately, you can’t know for sure if it’s true in every single case. 

On a popular tag page, a post is lost quickly. It will be replaced by new content, and you won’t get expected reach and engagement. 

So what are the hashtags that you should use for Instagram growth? You better use tags with different frequencies. Less popular Instagram hashtags help to get bigger reach and engagement. If users like the posted content, you get more likes and new followers. High-frequency hashtags give results right after publishing, while the post is still at the top of the Recent. 

Collecting the right hashtags takes time. But as a result you get more likes and subscribers on Instagram.

Analyze your competitors to figure out what Instagram hashtags they use. There might be hashtags you’d never come up with. 

Consider the general portrait of your audience to find the right Instagram hashtags. There is no sense in using modern slang if you promote wrinkle cream or camel’s hair belt. On the other hand, a young audience won’t understand boomers’ phrases.

Age, gender and location of the followers you can see in the Insights. 

Add places to the word combinations. They can turn any high-frequency Instagram hashtag into a low-frequency one. 

Such tags are even more useful to local businesses. Thus you’ll attract the audience which is more likely to buy your product. The users will be more active in your Instagram profile, which is a good sign to Instagram algorithms. 

Look at the examples. A popular hashtag #coffee becomes a low-frequency tag after adding New York City as a location.

You should not use Instagram hashtags encouraging people to harmful behavior and violating the Community Guidelines. You just won’t see banned hashtags in the search. 

There are also ambiguous Instagram hashtags. Not all content with them violates the Instagram rules. So there are pages of these tags in the search results, but there is no separation into Top and Recent. Getting your posts on such tag pages is difficult, but we do not recommend it either way. The social network restricts showing posts with such tags.

We do not recommend using tags like #mutuallikes or #mutualsubscription. To Instagram, it equals cheating. These are not banned hashtags, but your account still may be banned. 

Unique tags are used for making contests and marathons, generating users’ content. Just add a tag in your bio or when posting like you usually do. The page for you own Instagram hashtag will be created automatically. Other users also will be able to use it.

If you want to create your own hashtag for Instagram, you need to think up a really unique word or word combination. The one that other users will not add when posting their completely other sort of content. 

Follow your branded hashtags. Then you can monitor your reputation, what other users post on Instagram using it, and how your marathon’s going.

For example, Popsugarbeauty uses its name to create their own branded hashtag on Instagram. 

Now you know how to find the right hashtags for Instagram. Make a list and order the tags in a table. Then, you will quickly find IG hashtags for publications. You can also track repeating tags. One and the same hashtags under several Instagram posts in a row is a bad signal for the algorithms.

Separate tags you’ve collected by the type and popularity. For each topic there should be several tags with different frequencies. 

Choose a post topic. Choose an Instagram hashtag from each column of frequency. 

Insights help to estimate how effectively you use hashtags on Instagram. Analyze the metrics of approximately the same content with different hashtags. You can figure out a pattern of what hashtags cause the biggest number of likes and comments. Using these words will result in your Instagram growth.

Posts statistics also show how many people viewed your photo and video from a tag page.

Instagram hashtags are a great tool for your account growth. If you use them right, you can increase reach and engagement, gain more likes and followers. 

Find hashtags for your Instagram profile and arrange them in a table. Add the tags of different frequencies under posts and Reels. Hashtags in Instagram Stories won’t be much help in an account promotion. 

Study Insights, metrics changes when use different tags. Use those that work best for you.