by Florence Broder

Thought you had all your Twitter metrics covered between the bit.ly and ow.ly stats? Have you already ventured to Twitter Counter and Twitalyzer as well? Well now there is a new way to measure your Twitter hashtags with What the Hashtag.

This site is a hashtag encyclopedia that utilizes wiki technology, allowing you to create entires for all the hashtags you use for your organization. No doubt you have seen #tcot on your feed and didn’t necessarily know what it stood for. But now you can you can look it up: #tcot. By creating an entry on What the Hashtag you accomplish a number of critical goals:

• Defining commonly used terms for your audience;
• Measuring use of the hashtags over a 7-day period;
• Tracking other Twitter users who use the terms;
• Adding links to related hastags as well as to external links;
• Finding other followers who support your mission or cause.

For instance, a commonly used term by the the Jewish Agency is aliyah. Although there are many who know the term, there may be others in our audience who do not. As you can see, the entry was created and now I am able to view critical information about its usage by our followers. Another value-added is the external link to our website is increasing traffic.

The first step is to “think like a user.” Review your most frequently used hashtags and start creating entries! Just keep in mind, like any wiki, anyone can change your definitions so be sure to maintain your terms on a watch list. Keep your definitions simple. Don’t take it for granted that everyone knows the abbreviations and hashtags you use. It will only enrich and strengthen the Twitter experience between your organization and your audience. After that the numbers will follow.

Florence Broder manages social media for the Jewish Agency for Israel.