Hashtag abuse: Stuffing, surfing and other 'malatweetisms'

If you've ever hopped on an existing Twitter stream to announce your (barely related) new product, you're guilty of Twitter hashtag abuse.

If you've ever created a hashtag so broad that the tweets fly by so fast that no mortal could possibly follow them, you're also guilty.

And perhaps worst of all, if you've ever used hashtags primarily for their search-related benefits instead of their benefit for your followers, you're guilty of hashtag abuse in the first degree.

“There's a smart way and a not-so-smart way to use hashtags,” said Tristan Handy, director-operations at social media marketing software company Argyle Social. “Many people are not doing it the smart way.”

The main point of tweeting at all is to satisfy your followers' desire for your content, Handy said. A secondary goal is to be retweeted, which results in more followers and a greater audience. And of course, the most effective way to get retweeted is to provide a steady steam of relevant and interesting content, he said.

“Our research pretty much confirms common sense,” Handy said of Argyle's studies into the use of social media and hashtags. “You're tweeting primarily to your followers because they want to read your content. Hashtag search is a secondary audience.”

The practice of hashtag stuffing or surfing can even hurt your company, said Maria Pergolino, senior director-marketing at marketing automation company Marketo Inc. Such practices include sending tweets that are mostly hashtags or piggy-backing on unrelated streams.

“I see a lot of vendors not related to large events trying to use the hashtag because it's doing well,” she said. “If you just see this block of one vendor pushing its products, it gets "spammy' and I think it affects your opinion of that brand.”

There are, however, hashtag best practices that can help you gain followers and a bigger audience.

First, Pergolino said, use tightly targeted hashtags, even in the context of larger events.

“Things can get too big,” she said. “Right now, we're using a hashtag for a large event that's coming up, and there are about 100 tweets a day. At the event, though, there could be 900 every half-hour. You can't follow along, so you need to step back and see what's trending.”

It's also wise to limit the sheer number of hashtags in any particular tweet. Obviously, with only 140 characters available, there isn't much room for more than a couple of hashtags along with a message of any substance. It's better to tweet more than once rather than to stuff a tweet with three or four hashtags so it looks like gibberish.

“There really are nuances to it,” Pergolino said. “You want it to look like you're having a conversation. You don't want people to get a bad impression.”