Everyone knows that Twitter is all about the conversation, right? It’s about connecting with people, developing relationships and sharing information in 140 characters.

Some communicators are better at balancing the three than others, but this post is for the PR and Marketing folk who use this platform to share valuable information. Here’s my first question for you (“experts” can jump to question two):

Do you know what hashtags are?

Hashtags.org defines them as “ a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to [your message].”

There aren’t any major rules when it comes to using hashtags. Simply throw in the “#” before the message and tweet away.

One of the most popular ways to use hashtags is to use the agreed upon hashtag when live tweeting from conferences. Here’s an example of that in action from BlogPotomac 2009:

“jaywalk1: @loryn24 Some would say YOU don’t determine your brand. The ppl you know and interact with do. I’m not buying that 100%. #blogpotomac“

As someone who tends to throw in my own tags from time to time, I was foolish to think that these were the main ones. In her discussion, she listed a host of others that I had never even heard of and said something that really drove a message home. I use these tags to speak to groups, but I speak to everyone.