Hashtags help journalists find people tweeting about topics they are covering. They also help people who are interested in the topics you cover find your tweets.

My second #twutorial post on Twitter techniques explained how to use lists, saved searches and alerts to help you organize the chaos of Twitter. Hashtags also help organize Twitter.

We’ll start with the basics: A hashtag is the # symbol, followed immediately, with no space, by a word or phrase: #twutorial. In tweets, the hashtag becomes a hyperlink you can click to go to a search of recent tweets using the hashtag.

Journalists use hashtags in two primary ways: to find tweets and to help others find their tweets.

Non-journo tweeps use hashtags in at least four primary ways that are helpful to reporters: regular hashtags, event hashtags, breaking-news hashtags that catch on and humorous hashtags.

I’ll address these four types of hashtags…