hashtag | PerkettPRsuasion - The PerkettPR Blog

The popularity of the hashtag (#) has just received another boost with the recent news that Facebook will now be rolling them out to users. While most of us are familiar with hastags and their rise to fame on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, their background and meaning remains shrouded in internet lore. Who created the hashtag? Why is it called a pound sign, number sign, and a host of other names? And when we use them, are they actually helpful? EContent‘s Jose Castillo explains The Humble History of the Hashtag #And #Why #It #Matters.

Social media can level the playing field between industry leaders and upstarts, between multinational corporation executives and small-business owners, making peers of all participants. So what makes the difference between a following of 500 and a following of 500,000? Brian Patrick Eha, Assistant Editor at Entrepreneur.com, provides 5 Social Media Rules Every Entrepreneur Should Know culled from darlings of the current social media landscape. Use these tips to increase your influence and make a direct impact on your business strategy.

Take a look at how many fans your company has on its social platforms. Now, look at how many of those fans are active and how they interact with your brand. There are all types of fans to consider; the casual liker, the deal seeker, and of course the ranters. So what other types of social media fans exist? MarketingProfs‘ Verónica Maria Jarski posts an infographic that provides profiles and suggestions for reaching various fan types in Seven Types of Social Media Fans and How to Engage With Them [INFOGRAPHIC].

Relatively recently, YouTube made a change to their ranking algorithm to favor watch time, which means the longer you can keep viewers tuned in to your videos, the higher they will rank in search. This doesn’t mean, however that you should make lots of long-form videos of 15 minutes or more. Watch time simply means the length of time your videos keep a viewer on the site. In ReelSEO‘s latest “Creator’s Tip #96″ How to Increase YouTube Watch Time by Linking to Playlists, host Tim Schmoyer offers this subtle method to get viewers watching more videos per session.

Pinterest released a new page design for profile pages this week - Danielle Leitch of SocialMediaToday discusses the improved functionality and advantages the new design will provide for both “pinners” and businesses alike in her post Pinterest has a New Design.

This week also brought the announcement of the integration of social media into Google Analytics, bridging the gap between social media and the metrics businesses care about. Frank Reed, Managing Editor at Marketing Pilgrim, asks Was Analytics Google’s REAL Social Media Missing Link? in his latest post that predicts marketers will be looking more closely at more social media channels and see the value of being in even more places.

As Twitter celebrated it’s sixth birthday this week, Nancy Scola set out on a quest for the origins of a hashtag and came up empty handed. In her latest post Our social-media amnesia, she discusses the access and value of archival tweets - via Reuters.

Speaking of hashtags, Todd Wasserman of Mashable focuses on 6 Successful Twitter Hashtag Campaigns that effectively harnessed Twitter in a way that provoked positive discussion and action.