LOL And The So­cial Me­dia Man­ager-To Avoid Or Not To Avoid Ab­bre­vi­a­tions And Hashtags

When it comes to writ­ing for so­cial me­dia, ab­bre­vi­a­tions and hash­tags seem to rule the plat­forms. In­di­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies are us­ing these ab­bre­vi­a­tions and hash­tags to in­crease their reach, com­mu­ni­cate more quickly, and to en­sure they don’t go over the 140-char­ac­ter Twit­ter limit.

But hash­tags and ab­bre­vi­a­tions can cause ir­ri­ta­tion or con­fu­sion among your fol­low­ers if they’re not used correctly.

So should you use ab­bre­vi­a­tions and hash­tags, or should you avoid them?

The fol­low­ing are some gen­eral guide­lines to help you de­ter­mine the right time (and the right way) to use them.

Use hash­tags sparingly.

Hash­tags are used on Twit­ter as a way to in­crease the reach of your tweets. Think of hash­tags as Twit­ter key­words. When you put the # sym­bol in front of a word, and if that word is searched by users, your tweet will come up. Many com­pa­nies use this as a way to put their tweets in front of con­sumers or other pro­fes­sion­als that would find it interesting.

Us­ing hash­tags is ac­cept­able, but you need to use them spar­ingly. The gen­eral rule is to never ex­ceed three hash­tags in every tweet you send. Any more than that, and your read­ers will be­come ir­ri­tated and tune out your tweets.

Keep the hash­tags on Twitter.

One of the most an­noy­ing so­cial me­dia habits that in­di­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies make is us­ing hash­tags on Face­book. If you are post­ing to Face­book, there is no need for you to use hash­tags, as they don’t serve a pur­pose. If you’re go­ing to use hash­tags, make sure you only use them on your tweets.

Use valu­able hashtags.

Some­where in the his­tory of Twit­ter, peo­ple de­cided to make their own hash­tags that come in the form of long phrases or sen­tences. It’s im­por­tant that you keep in mind do­ing this doesn’t serve any pur­pose other than show­ing your cre­ativ­ity or be­ing funny.

These hash­tags will not help your tweet gain ex­po­sure, so you may want to stick with only real and valu­able hash­tags to get re­sults. Us­ing hash­tags like #idrankallmy­cof­fee isn’t go­ing to do any­thing for your busi­ness aside from tell your fol­low­ers that you drank coffee.

Only use com­mon abbreviations.

There are cer­tain ab­bre­vi­a­tions that are un­der­stood by a wide au­di­ence, such as LOL or LMAO. If you’re go­ing to use ab­bre­vi­a­tions in your so­cial me­dia strate­gies, it’s im­por­tant that you stick to ab­bre­vi­a­tions that are un­der­stood by a large au­di­ence, es­pe­cially your au­di­ence. Us­ing ab­bre­vi­a­tions that your au­di­ence doesn’t un­der­stand is only go­ing to cause confusion.

If you are go­ing to ab­bre­vi­ate words so that you can keep your tweet within 140 char­ac­ters, it’s also im­por­tant that you choose ab­bre­vi­a­tions that make sense.

For ex­am­ple, in­stead of writ­ing “search en­gine op­ti­miza­tion”, you can cut it down to “SEO”, as this is understood.

Try­ing to cre­ate your own ab­bre­vi­a­tions can cause con­fu­sion among your au­di­ence, so al­ways be­ware of what you’re try­ing to ab­bre­vi­ate. If you don’t think that your au­di­ence will un­der­stand it, try to rewrite your tweet so that you don’t need the abbreviation.

Kelly Parker is a so­cial me­dia man­ager and avid blog­ger.  She al­ways uses an on­line check­ing tool to proof her work be­fore post­ing it online.