Twitter is an important part of any social media promotion campaign and there are a variety of methods to get yourself and your articles out there. One of the best is the use of hashtags.
The Twitter hashtag, "#" is used like a keyword. The hashtag is a convenient way for users to categorize their tweets so that the tweet reaches a broader community.
If your Twitter account is public and someone who is not one of your followers does a search on the word you have preceded with a hashtag, your tweet will come up in the search results.
As an example, once I publish this article, I'm going to promote it on Twitter. The name of the article and the url will be shown in the tweet. Depending on the number of characters I still have available, I will add #freelance, #writer tips, #socmedia, #income or perhaps one of the writers groups I belong to. That way, if someone is searching twitterland for information on any of those topics, my tweet will show up with the link to the article.
Use of the valuable search and hashtag ability of Twitter is also a valuable tool in research. If you're working on a series of articles on growing trends, like living on a reduced income, search #frugal. This will bring up tweets of complete strangers who have tweeted about the subject. If you can identify a credible tweeter, you can follow the person (who will then probably follow you back) and often find valuable information to use in your article.
Don't use too many hashtags in your tweets, and don't use hashtags that don't pertain to your tweets. For instance, if I tried to lure sports fans to click my link by using the term #football, I stand to lose any credibility with my established followers. If there is room at the end of the tweet for several hashtags, focus on who you're targeting your article to, and what terms they may be searching for.
