Authors, do you want to connect with readers via Twitter? One of the ways for readers to find your author tweets about your book(s) is through the strategic use of hashtags, keywords that are prefaced with this sign: #. On Twitter, hashtags allow you to categorize your tweet. But what tweets should authors use to connect with readers?

I recently wanted to promote a children’s picturebook, so I checked out the hashtags that might be used. Some of these are specific to children’s literature, but many of them are general hashtags for any book.

This is the number of tweets for a hashtags per hour, checked at 9pm Sunday night, using hashtag.org. I know that the day and time that I checked affected the results, perhaps drastically. On any given day, a hashtag might have a very different popularity. For example, many chats occur at a specific time on a specific day and will rack up many tweets during that time and very few at other times.

If you are interested in using a particular hashtag, you should investigate it further. On hashtag.org, you can see typical posts for that hashtag. You’ll want to check this to make sure you aren’t using something that has more than one meaning. For example, in education, many educators use ELA to mean English Language Arts; however, #ELA is usually referring to teaching English as a second language and most of the tweets were in Spanish.

You may also want to check other hashtags that are specific to your book: genres, special audiences, seasonal tags, etc.

30 Great Hashtags; 31 Hashtags to Avoid

Hashtag – number of tweets/hour, peak hour for tweets

• #Kindle – 742 @ 4 pm
• #books – 488 @ 7 am
• #Ebook – 325 @ noon
• #kids – 319 @ 3pm
• #science – 260 @ 8 pm
• #novel – 268 @ 3pm
• #education 206 @ 6pm
• #edchat – 199 @ 7 am, 4 pm
• #edtech 180 @ 8 am
• #Ebooks – 150 @ 5 am
• #MustRead – 139 @ 7pm
• #fiction – 135 @ 10 am
• #Reading – 124 @ 3 pm
• #KidLit – 88 @ 5 am, 9 am, 4pm
• #Literature – 86 @ 11 am
• #teachers – 77 @ 1pm
• #cpchat – 72 @ 2pm (Connected Principals)
• #elementary – 71 @ noon
• #edu – 70 @ 5 pm
• #1stChat – 59 @ 8pm
• #elearning – 54 @ 10pm
• #STEM – 52 @ 9 pm
• #GoodRead – 44 @ pm
• #edapps – 38 @ 8 am, 7 pm
• #nonfiction – 34 @ 10 am
• #greatreads – 34 @ 11 am
• #students – 34 @ 4 am, noon
• #homeschool – 34 @ 4am, 10 am
• #4thChat – 34 @ 5pm
• #educators – 34 @ 5 am
• #FridayReads – 0
• #BookGiveaway – 0
• #LitChat – 0
• #StoryFriday – 0
• #NFKidLit – 0
• #SCBWI – 0
• #ccss – 0
• #commoncore – 0
• #earlylearning – 0
• #ecosys – 0
• #educator – 0
• #elemsci – 0
• #enrichingkids – 0
• #enviroed – 0
• #followalibrarian – 0
• #grandparentlessons – 0
• #healthed – 0
• #ipadapp – 0
• #ipadapps – 0
• #k12 – 0
• #languagearts – 0
• #literacy – 0
• #picturebook – 0
• #reteach – 0
• #RETeacher – 0
• #rdngtchr – 0
• #scichat – 0
• #2ndChat – 0
• #3rdChat – 0
• #5thChat – 0
• #6thChat – 0

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