Hashtag and hashtagging

Hashtag is a way or means to group posts for easy access in the social networking sites and the internet in general. Companies, government and non-governmental organizations used this medium to achieve a collective work. Sometimes hashtags are been used to present elections results or submit certain report.

Hashtagging is not only for organizations or companies, indiviuals do use hashtagging to update their status, hence making it easy for people to access the post based on the common tag. Hashtags can help people contribute into a particular topic or discussions simply. Activists use hashtag for cyber demonstration.

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Common hashtag mistakes and corrections

Many people make so many mistakes when creating hashtags. I saw many online journals making the same mistakes like normal individuals. In IT everything you do goes by certain rules. You don't just write “#” and write what ever you like without following the rules and you expect it to be perfect. Below we shall discussed the common hashtags mistakes and corrections.

Placing the hash # symbol after the word

one of the common mistakes people make is placing the # after the word they want to tag. For example ICTmagazine#, this will never work. The only way hashtag will work is by placing the “#” before the word without spacing (#ICTmagazine).

Using spacing between words 

Just like in normal programming language, writing ICT magazine is not the same with ICTmagazine. When you are trying to create a tag with two different word (like ICT and magazine) you are left with three options
1. Camel sentence: this is combination of upper case(capital letters) and lower case(capital letters). For example #ICTmagazine, #IctMagazine or #ictMagazine etc.
2. Using the underscore (_): Creating a hashtag with more than one word can be done using under score to act like spacing. For example #ICT_magazine.
3. Writing without spacing nor underscore, for example #icmagazine.

Use of special characters within tags

The only special character that is allowed to be used in hashtag is the one already mentioned the underscore “_”. when one tried to create a tag like this #ict@magazine, #ict$magazine, #ICT*magazine, #ICT+magazine, #ICT%magazine etc it will never work, thus only the first word will be hashetagged, in this case only the ICT or ict will be hashtagged.  The only valid one will be #ICT_magazine, because its the only one that carried the valid special character.

Using more than one hash symbol within a tag

One of the most common mistakes people made when hashtagging is using more than one hashtag in a sentence or when tagging more than one word. For example #ICT#magazine, this is only tag the first word and discard the rest of the words. In twitter it will see both words as common words and not hashtag.

Never start tags with numbers or create tags with numbers only

Tags and contains numbers within but not in the beginning. Hashtag like #ict20 is valid while #20ict or #2000 is invalid.

You can drop your corrections and suggestions through the comment space or area. Mind you English is not my tongue… laughing… I'm still a learner...