So what are the most popular hashtags in Dubai and where did the hashtag come from anyway? This social media staple of twitter and Instagram makes sure your business news gets found and if it is alluring enough, will help it spread too…. to the people that count!.
Hashtags were first introduced on twitter by Chris Messina and his first one was #barcamp. The San Diego fires got Chris thinking and led to a better way to coordinate communications via twitter. At this time his hashtags had some reservation from the Twitter Management but now hashtags are ubiquitous… even in speech ( if you are a parent of a teenager you know this!).
Hashtags are a simple way of grouping together events # diabetesmonth , adding context for tweets #UAE, commenting on stories #fail or keeping up with news #F1.
What other twitter conventions are there? Have they taken off as much? Here we see Chris using a few common ones in a recent tweet.
/ is used to serially string together several phrases and can save the odd letter in your 140 limit
cc is used to indicate someone you want to direct a tweet at and helps get their attention
@ is used to refer to someone directly and is followed by their user name. Referring to someone like this is engaging because it gives them a shout out and may even encourage them to follow you back.
There are lots more frequently used abbreviations such as DM (Direct Message) and H/T (hat tip) and so many spawn spontaneously that you won’t use. #FF is FollowFriday and can be used (only on a Friday, bad form otherwise!) to ask people to follow your recommended twitter users
e.g. #FF@ismtraining. Enjoying the great Training Company tweets!
Give people a good reason to follow your suggestion though otherwise it looks spammy.
So what about UAE centric hashtags? The most popular on twitter would seem to be #UAE #Dubai #AbuDhabi #Emirati and #My Dubai , but others trend all the time . Getting a tweet to trend is actually surprisingly not that hard on paper at least…
#UAE_Innovates for example was trending on November 22nd with only about 175 tweets per hour over a 2 hour period. These were in the wee small hours of the morning with main tweeters being the CDA Dubai and the Land Department. So aiming for this number over a short period and at the right time should get you trending. Hashtags Org is a pretty nifty tool to get information like this. #Dubai tends to get between 200 and 600 tweets/hour with #MyDubai at 60 to 200.
On Instagram the hashtags will be a little different because it is a photo based social media site. Popular ones include #love #instagood #me #tbt #followme and #ThrowbackThursday ( or #TT) which allows people to reminisce through words and pictures of past experiences. Don’t just throw in random hashtags otherwise no-one will find you so make sure you know the popular ones for your business.
All hash tagged out? If not check out our #ISMDubai to see what people are saying about our training!