Here in Victoria, we use the hashtag #YYJ to help us differentiate Victoria, BC, Canada from any of the other Victorias around the world – Victoria, TX, Victoriaville, the province of Victoria in Australia, as well as any person named Victoria. Not only does this allow for more precise communications, but since the hashtag only uses 4 characters, it’s an economical process, too.
What’s a hashtag? It’s a way of making a topic, name, or subject easier to search for in Twitter. If you’ve used twitter, you may have noticed the following hashtags:
- #FF or #FollowFriday – A way of easily sharing your followers with other people in your stream. You are telling the rest of your followers to follow these people, and that’s a good thing.
- #sxsw is the tag to follow for the South by Southwest conference
- #fb = facebook
- #In = LinkedIn
- #YVR = Vancouver, BC, Canada
- #LAX – Los Angeles
- #SFO – San Francisco, CA
- #SEA – Seattle
Here’s a great article from Chris Messina about using hashtags for emergencies .
Or, check out the Ultimate Guide to Twitter Hashtags.
The reason for this post – to help a new client spread the word about her new business via Twitter, I was looking for the city code for San Francisco. Since I couldn’t find a comprehensive list of all of the cities in Canada and the US, I scrounged up the airport codes from world-airport-codes.com, and compiled them into an excel spreadsheet. I know that come cities have more than one airport, so the Twits in those cities should decide on the best tag to use.
You can download the spreadsheet with the Cities by Hashtag.
If you find this list useful, or you would like to add something to the list, please send me a note, either email or twitter, and use the tag – #cityhashtag
@brandscaping
Andrew
I recently undertook the process to determine if my city, Colubmus, IN, had a branded hashtag. I was unable to find a definitive result, so I set out to create, distribute and promote a hashtag. You can read more about it in my post https://ht.ly/31hkL
How did #YYJ become the hashtag for Victoria, BC, Canada? It’s short and easy to type, but it doesn’t seem intuitive to me. thanks!
@Andrew_K_Kirk
Brandscaping
Hey Andrew
#yyj is the airport code for Victoria, BC – which is how we are able to distinguish ourselves from the other Victoria locations around the globe. Since there is only one international airport serving us, it was a good choice.
J
Andrew
How is the adaptation of the #YYJ hashtag been in Victoria, BC?
As in FYI, have you checked out https://standardhashtag.com? I have no affiliation or personal connection with the site. But it appears they also trying to standardize hashtags based five various categories with respect to specific locations. You may want to share city #hashtag idea and possibly collaborate.
Thanks again and good luck!
jessiex
We’re working on it in Howard County, Md – https://goo.gl/cNCJfi