What is the difference between a handle and a hashtag

The symbol should be used to tag specific friends or acquaintances into your posts and photos. Use the symbol to notify them about posts they will want to check out. Adding the symbol followed by a popular news source, celebrity or organization is a great way to reach them with your comments or suggestions.

This possibility of being heard is just one of the many benefits of using the symbol on social media. Coincidentally, news stations often refer to trending Twitter hashtags to report on what most people are talking about. It has even reached beyond hard news sources and into late night TV.

On picture-sharing sites, such as Instagram or Tumblr, tagging helps push your interests further. By searching similar hashtags, it could open up more inspiration for your own blog. Tips for managing your contacts How to get the most out of your DVR The many benefits of starting a blog. There also must be a space in front of the " " symbol for a hashtag to work.

You can make up whatever you want for a hashtag, but do your homework! Before designating a particular hashtag for an event, search with it and make sure it's not already in use for some other reason. One group I worked with started using a hashtag for a local fundraiser but when searched, it was in use for a large carnival being held with some questionable costumes on the other side of the world.

This could easily be confusing for those outside the host organization who were looking for pictures or more information about the local event. Don't throw a trending hashtag into your post without knowing why it's trending either.

Don't hijack a trending hashtag when your post has nothing to do with it. It's needs to be relevant to make sense. Hashtags are most effective on Twitter and Instagram. They can be spotted on Facebook and other social media sites but flat out do not work on LinkedIn. At least not right now. If anything holds true to all social media sites, they're constantly changing. You can search online with a hashtag to get all kinds of results, though. Handles are not hashtags. A handle is simply a name or nickname for a social media site.

It's your username. If you were around in the 70's, no double you had or knew someone with a CB handle. For those too young to know what a CB is, google it. It's your created name or real name, brand name, account name preceded by the " " symbol. While hashtags and handles are two totally different entities, you might have a user who utilizes the same characters as both a handle and a hashtag. I advise using the same handle across whatever social media channels you use.

Handles do not trend like hashtags. People, most often celebrities, will trend when a ton of accounts are posting about them but not their handles per se. Use a handle in a post when you want to talk to someone.

It's just like calling them by name. Some will answer. Some will not. Don't tag tag means to use someone's handle a bunch of people in a post on a regular basis or without good cause. This can be the equivalent of those telemarketing calls that caused you to rid yourself of your landline. Whereas hashtags only apply to some social media, handles are across the board.

Simply place that number sign in front of a word or string of characters no spaces or punctuation to tell the social network that your post, picture or video should be archived with all other content tagged with that specific hashtag. When someone searches for said hashtag they will then be able to see all the posts that have been tagged, sorted into a single stream.

We never talked about it…. The symbol that we are all so familiar with thanks to our email-dependent lives , functions in much the same way as a hashtag, but serves a different purpose:. When you place the symbol the social tag in front of an account name a handle , it alerts that account that you are talking about, with or to them. Jump on your social media network of choice, search for their handle MayeCreate and tag them in your next Facebook post.

Like so:. Keep up the great job with the social tagging! The functionality of tagging can vary based on the social network and user privacy settings. The important thing to take away is that it functions as an alert and not a private message. Hashtags are a great way to allow other users to discover your content based on their own interests.

But always remember to use common sense and follow best practices when using hashtags. Hashtags can contain letters, digits and underscores — but need to form a string no spaces or punctuation. Generally, when formatting your hashtags you just want to keep them consistent, easy to read and aesthetically pleasing. Studies continue to show that hashtags make your content easier to find and even increase engagement rates, but posts with too many hashtags can feel spamy leading to diminishing returns.

Social networks are a largely visual media and walls of hashtags are unappealing. So, only use relevant and targeted hashtags, and remember that different hashtags will get you different results. Other hashtags like volunteer are more evergreen and can garner more interest over time.