This post by Patricia Weber is an entry to our $4,000 Blogging Contest. Patricia is an author, speaker and coach inspiring and supporting introverts and baby boomers to access more energy to live life at full-throttle. As an internationally recognized introvert authority in print, on radio and podcasts, she blogs at www.patricia-weber.com about her upcoming 2014 book, Communication Toolkit for Introverts.
After joining Twitter the first hashtag I learned was #FollowFriday. Having no understanding of it, when my Twitter handle first showed up with that hashtag next to it, my thoughts were, “What’s that about?”. But then, at the time, Twitter for me was just something someone whose social media savvy I regarded highly told me: “You gotta be there.”
When #FollowFriday showed up a second time together with my Twitter handle, though, I emailed a former coach to find how what this was really about. Now, years later, I’m aware that I just need to know which hashtags to use to reach my audience on Twitter.
Perhaps you think you know what hashtags to use to reach your audience on Twitter, but, are you sure? I thought I was fully aware but, as I learned later, that wasn’t nearly as fully as I thought.
Enter hashtagify.me, a free tool to help you find the right hashtags to use for your audience, as well as understand them.
The Quiet Side of #introverts
Once you set up an account at hashtagify.me, if you are as curious about your audience as I am about mine, you’ll begin to quickly make some discoveries. I trust my Webmaster with blog and website tools, and her expertise with SEO, but the Tweeting and other social media posting is up to me.
Upon logging in and searching for my main audience, #introvert, I immediately see the top 10 hashtags related to introvert.
When hovering over any one of the hashtag circles, I see more data – the popularity and correlation to the primary hashtag. For example, #introvert had a popularity of 40.1 but #quiet had a popularity of 46 and a correlation from #introvert of 1.6%. This is now going to be a second hashtag in my Twitter stream. Who knew?
Then I compared #introvert against #introverts, which had a lower popularity of 33.3 but the related hashtag #quiet, had a 2.5% correlation with it.
My process with this was to first focus on introvert-like words – like quiet. However in looking at the top 10 hashtags, every one of the others were as highly correlated. I’m thinking this may mean these are topics of interest for both the introvert and the people tweeting about introverts. For example, #extrovert was correlated at 4.9%. This relationship is something I often tweet about as well and now, knowing about the higher correlation has me considering how to legitimately use the two terms together in some tweets.
NEW ACTION: Seems like I would get a higher reach using #quiet and #introvert, not #introverts. Stepping into the Twitter stream with that combination will be a test. Checking back for new correlations is going to be important as it changes regularly, with the Twitter stream.
#Introvert Recent Tweets
When searching for #introvert statistics, besides getting the top related hashtags and identifying the Top Influencers, one of the most beneficial finds is the Top Recent Tweets. Here is the real gold in moving conversations along. As social media evolves, if it isn’t clear early on, it’s a quick understanding that “social” is what we have to be. The recent Tweets are a quick view of valuable people to either Retweet or connect with further.
In scanning the tweets found, I discovered someone looking for service providers for #introvert business owners, someone announcing a new introvert guide, and mostly talk about the nature of introverts.
NEW ACTION: Why not be a master of your time? http://hashtagify.me/ executes valuable analysis for knowing the popularity of hashtags we use, as well as best correlations to them to widen our reach. At the same time, all in one place on one browser window, we can also identify the most recent tweets related to the hashtag in question. Recency is an important and researched variable. It helps us plan better with the next value tweet we send, and even who we might want to mention in it.
Checking the top 6 influencers, when hovering over Twitter handles, a quick scan over the graph chart shows the number of followers each one has. A click and http://hashtagify.me/ opens up a new browser tab to their Twitter page.
No surprise to me, the top influencers fell in the realm of those who might share tweets about the psychology of, what goes on in an introvert’s head: @PsychToday and @Psych2morrowmag rated #1 and #3. It was a surprise I wasn’t yet following them!
NEW ACTION: It’s easy enough to also find out and look at the Twitter stream of these top influencers. A Twitter profile page opens in a new tab, glance at their Tweets, and make a decision to follow or not to follow.
Where in the World Are People Tweeting My Talk?
The third tab over, Usage Patterns, even at the free level for this tool, allows an immediate look at weekly and monthly trends – is the #hashtag going up, going down in use? What are the top days and hours it is being tweeted?
Comparing #introvert and #introverts, further validated the choice to focus on #introvert: the sample size in #introvert is noted as fair, but #introverts only small.
And of course, introverts being of the quiet nature, they are not likely to be tweeting at the high end of volume, which the stats proved out.
When scrolling down in this window, one of the most interesting things is in the top 6 language used with the #introvert tag. My #1, no surprise – English. But #2 and #3, surprise – Indonesian and Swedish. Who knew? Not even in my research for my upcoming book did I find this information.
It’s not quite clear to me yet, how to make use of this other than to acknowledge that the #introvert hashtag can be understood globally.
For the Creative Tweeter and #Blogger
Besides knowing about our own audience, as a blogger, doesn’t it serve us at times to hitch a star onto trending events? In the Popular Hashtags tab, whether interested in last week or last month, or what is “breaking out” or trending, and in what language, find the Top 30 hashtags globally in the general domain of Twitter.
In this recent scanning, my best take-away as none of them inspired in me ideas to blog about, was to at least narrow my options. Because the hashtag analysis includes trends, what I came up with for discovering the last week of my inquiry, is to think about the top 3 highest trending tweets, and think about how it might fit with ideas for upcoming posts.
Then I spotted one: #GoldenGlobes. I’m not a big movie fan, but some of them interest me. The idea occurred to me then to get familiar with the movies up for these awards and if I by chance have seen one, or know of the actors in them from previous movies, that could let me circle back to valuable content for my #introvert audience.
Most of my friends who land on my blog are bloggers. Regardless of our reason for blogging, we want our voice and message to be heard. In our request for and even hope for social share, Twitter is central. Why not get a top down perspective to hone the words you speak in your blog?
Tell me what you think: What do you do with your Tweeting analysis to tune up attracting your audience? Do you see how this free tool might be helpful in furthering the reach of your audience? Would you like to share this post?
