HOW TO add hashtags while auto-publishing posts to Twitter

Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They're like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.

So if you are interested in listening to what the twitterati is saying about jQuery, you can search with the #jQuery hashtag on Twitter Search or hashtags.org

I've been looking for a simple way to convert the keywords within the headings of my blog posts that I auto-publish to Twitter to hashtags that are already used on Twitter. There are multiple tools that can take your feed &  auto-publish it to Twitter. I found two methods to convert keywords to hashtags -

1. The FeedBurner Socialize service makes it easy to publicize your articles by auto-publishing their feed to Twitter.

To automatically add hashtags while publishing your feed items to Twitter, sign-in to FeedBurner, go to the Publicize tab & pick the Socialize option in the left-side menu.

For the label Hash tags in the form, choose "Create hash tags from item categories" to let FeedBurner  automatically convert labels or tags, assigned to your post through a blogging system like Blogger or a CMS, to hashtags. For instance, JavaScript is a label I use within Blogger. The preview below shows how the label within the heading of a feed item of my blog would show up after I activate the service.

To make the best of this service, choose label names that are already existing Twitter hashtags. Additionally, utilize the feature that FeedBurner provides to append a string like "My blog post:" infront of the article title to distinguish it from your manually submitted tweets.

What's more, the Google URL Shortener service goo.gl used for the links in the auto-published tweets, also provides click analytics which lets you track popularity of your links.

2. Twitter has introduced its own version of Tweet buttons that you can customize & embed so that it appears along side each article/post.

Although you have to manually assign the hashtags, the process is partly simplified as the article heading & shortened URL are filled in for you.