Hashtags can be a powerful communication tool for businesses. Rupert Staines, European MD at RadiumOne offers seven best practice tips on getting them right
The social media boom showed no signs of relenting last year and with that exponential growth came the wider use of hashtags by businesses and consumers. In fact the American Dialect Society crowned ‘hashtag’ as the word of the year and the French government’s General Commission for Terminology and Neology have issued a recommendation that French social media users should shun the term in favour of a French alternative due to how widely used it has become in the country. Whichever way you look at it, the hashtag revolution is certainly causing quite a stir globally and has become one of the most popular and recognisable phrases – with one couple even naming their child Hashtag. Although I wouldn’t recommend this, hashtags are clearly worth keeping on top of, so here are some tips to help marketers effectively use them to benefit their business:
1. What is your hashtag for?
By using a hashtag in a tweet or in the description of a particular photo, users can associate their content with a theme denominated by the hashtag itself. For example, by using the hashtag #B2Badvice, you’ve naturally associated your content with talkability around B2B. This automatic indexing makes search, the second use of hashtags, possible, meaning users can find information linked to their interest on a social rather than search-optimised basis.
2. Promote your hashtag
What’s the point of a hashtag if nobody sees or uses it? Stick your hashtag on all your social media websites, on your print marketing materials, at the bottom of your emails, and in any other visible spots. It makes sense that the more places it’s seen, the more people will use it. That said, there does need to be an actual reason behind the use, and inviting people to ‘join the discussion’ or ‘voice their views’ by including a hashtag is a good way of boosting engagement around your chosen talking point.
3. #Don’t #overdo #it
The more hashtags you’re using, the more conversations you’re entering. Instead of jumping on three hashtags to make sure your content is seen, just pick the most relevant and use that instead (numerous hashtags run the danger of making things look messy and hard-to-read which may in turn deter the audience). Stick to these basic rules: one is best, two is acceptable, three is pushing it and any more than that and you’re just spamming.
4. Jump on other hashtags
Popularising hashtags is sometimes difficult, so rather than coming up with your own, search social media to find out what is being used in conversations similar to the one you’re trying to start. As long as what you’re saying is relevant it’s not a crime to add to the conversations. There are even opportunities to change the use of a hashtag altogether, a great example being the charity Water Is Life turning #firstworldproblems on its head.
5. #Keepitshort
There are a couple of good reasons short and concise hashtags work. The longer a hashtag is the harder it is to read and the easier it is to confuse. Secondly, typing out something long will often result in the hashtag being misspelt, meaning the content won’t be associated with its intended conversation, especially if done via mobile. Finally, a hashtag that takes up half your space just isn’t viable if you really want to say something. It’s often hard to simplify products and services, but it pays off in social media. In addition, a good tactic is to integrate your hashtags into sentences. By doing this, the hashtag is contextualised and the content looks better. It also means you save space and can therefore write more. Simple.
6. Remember you don’t own it
You may have come up with it but that doesn’t mean you own and can control it – far from it. As with everything on the internet, hashtags are open to manipulation; often in a bad way.
First off, make sure your hashtag is fool proof. Long hashtags made up of many words can often make for some difficult reading. Additionally, individual words used as a hashtag can easily be manipulated in any sentence. Best practice would be to come up with an acronym and end it with a number (if relevant) to ensure it isn’t trolled. There are already enough hashtag disasters out there and you don’t want your business to be the root of the next one.
7. Look beyond the obvious
Using hashtags in their conventional ways should now be second nature to marketers, but their capabilities don’t end there.
Another key way businesses can innovate using social media is by using hashtags for advertising. By identifying customers through the hashtags they use, businesses can connect in real-time with people who are receptive based on their engagement with a particular subject, therefore getting relevant adverts to the right audience at the right time.
These tips should point you in the right direction when using hashtags but, as with everything to do with social media, using a little bit of common sense, thinking about how you want your business and issues to be presented will go a long way. On top of that, a bit of gut instinct never goes amiss.
