The hashtag trend surely started with twitter but don’t you want to know how this icon came into existence?

What is a hashtag?

Hashtags are created by placing “#” before a word or phrase, without spaces. In the world of social media world, the hashtag has become a highly effective tool to start a conversation, increase brand visibility and achieve more and more audience. A hashtag essentially implies a type of meta-data tag used on the social network and microblogging services which make it possible for customers or users to still find information with a particular concept.

To Change The Way We Communicate

The understanding of the first hashtag was recommended on August 23, 2007, by Chris Messina, ex-Uber, ex-Googler and technical evangelist who wanted to change the way we use social media to communicate. Two days later, he released long proposal clarifying his objective, with suggestions for how Twitter might follow the idea of using Hashtag. As it occurred, Twitter didn’t really officially identify the hashtag until July 15, 2011.

Chris had written in a short article that he wanted to send online community, in some small way in order to all those who came before him and had contributed their time, effort, and love.

Hashtags help target your audience

Not only can hashtags help you focus on a topic, but they can also help you target your viewers, as well. If you are an independent web developer, for example, you might want to tag those twitter post that contains tips for other developers with #webdevelopertip. This will show your followers that you’re writing for a specific audience, and it will help them sort through the tweets that are relevant to them by looking for that hashtag.

To Target Twitter Content More Effectively

 Messina is also known for his participation in assisting to develop the BarCamp, Spread Firefox, and co-working movements.

He came up with the idea of using the hashtag when a lot of early Twitter users were looking for a way to target their content more effectively and provides people a way to track into the discussion they were fascinated in.

Many people were suggesting to create a Twitter group but Chris felt that concept wasn’t really mobile-friendly.  Inspired by the use of the hashtag in Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Chris suggested adding a tag prefixed with “#” anywhere in the tweet, so that it gets included in a particular channel or group.

Hashtags can get you more followers

One of the easiest ways to gain your followers is to simply use hashtags. Using the right hashtags can increase the reach and engage with your topic. Hashtags mostly used on social media sites, you can see on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest and much more. Hashtags provide a way for customers to navigate to the topic of their interest.