What Teachers Need to Know about Using Hashtags in Google Plus

Google Plus is now supporting the use of Hashtags. As I mentioned in Teacher's Guide to The Use of Hashtags, the concept of hashtags was first introduced to Twitter with the purpose of creating communities around a specific content. Clicking on a hashtag will show relevant content.

Now Google Plus users can also capitalize on the potential of these content symbols. The process is virtually identical to Twitter. You can embed any given hashtag in your google Plus post be it in the start, middle or end of your post. Hashtags you use in your Google+ posts may also appear at the top of your post as related hashtags.

Hashtags appearing at the top of a post are related to the post’s content. Clicking on a hashtag will let you explore related posts. Hashtags with gray coloring are those used by the author of the post while hashtags with blue coloring are added by Google based on the content of the post. Related hashtags help posts get discovered and build conversations around the content of that post.

You can also search Google Plus using hashtags the same way you would do in Twitter. Just head over to your Google Plus page and type in the search panel the hashtag you want to search. A list of relevant posts featuring that hashtag will be displayed.

Google Plus also provides a list of trending hashtags that you can access and use. See screenshot below