Are Twitter hashtags working optimally for StackGenealogy and G&FH SE?

Question

I have just had a bit of a look at how Twitter hashtags arise for our StackGenealogy Twitter account that is fully automated.

Currently, the first (most common) tag on a question that gets tweeted by the account is used, and so looking at the 10 most recent ones we get Twitter hashtags of:

• militaryrecords for:

  • Meaning of term "Irregularly resigned" for ancestor who served in American Revolutionary War?
  • What details are needed about ancestor to uncover ship they immigrated to America on?

• immigration for Finding Passenger Lists for Det forenede Dampskibs-Selskab A/S (DFDS) steamships, particularly from Denmark to UK in 1913?

• NOTHING on Should Army, Navy and Air Force be synonyms of Military Records tag? - which is from Meta

• unitedstates for Finding New York City/State records relating to Sellars family (British subjects) births/deaths mid 19th century?

• 19thcentury for:

  • When, where and to whom was William Henry Rouse born in about 1832 near Truro (or Redruth), Cornwall?
  • What does "Containing by Estimation Seven Days' Work" mean in 1810 Land Auction advertisement?

• england for What is written after John Lark's name?

• photo for Are there any Genealogical / Historical Photo Request Communities?

• india for Building Genealogy/Family trees for Hindu families?

Is this the best way? Can we tag better here to get better hashtags on Twitter? Should we, even if we can?

If we wanted to we could ask for #genealogy to be put on every tweet via the mechanism described at Add site specific hashtag to Twitter feeds

Is that what we want instead?

Any ideas as answers are welcome. This discussion arose from an idea that @JanMurphy mentioned in a comment on Should Army, Navy and Air Force be synonyms of Military Records tag?.

Answer 1

If I could tweak the settings for @StackGenealogy, I would set the hashtag to #genealogy so that the tweets would show up for users searching for that hashag.

I would ONLY add the hashtag #genealogy and not any of the other tags which we might put on a question -- see this comment made by @Anna Lear in Meta for the reason why:

However, y'all gotta keep in mind the maximum tweet length. Can't go too crazy with hashtags when there's title summary and URL to get in there as well.

People using hashtags as a filter on Twitter are most likely to be searching for #genealogy and not our other tags.

Answer 2

I am not clear on why something wouldn't get a hashtag, as every post should have one, but also not clear to what level of controls we have over building the hashtag.

I think the hashtag of UnitedStates & Photo is just about useless, but military-records and immigration very useful in the context. If you look at Pinterest you see what works successfully on some of those boards but you have more room there as well.

My thoughts: Only post primary synonyms, if we can. Exclude regional / location tags, if we can. Exclude "photo".

Tag all, and possibly only with a unique hashtag #GEFH or #GESE or #FamHist that is short, or use one of the more established genealogy tags and commonly used tags like #Ancestry.