“The hashtag (#) has become one of the most valuable assets in any modern marketing campaign” (MacMillan, 2013).

Mohammad & Kiritchenko (2015) regard hashtags “to capture fine emotion categories” and what began on Twitter has now spread to Facebook, Google+, Instagram and anything in between.

Several hashtags are generated each day yet “only a few will burst and become trending topics” (Shoubin et al, 2015). However, the importance of hashtags is clear as over 70% of consumers are motivated to discover new content when hashtags are involved (RadiumOne, cited in MarketWired, 2013). So I’ve rounded up some do’s and don’ts to guide you in the right direction in your #journey.

DO be specific

Whether your hashtag is related to your business or simply describing your post, make sure that you have some level of exclusivity. LePage (2014) claims that “The more specific you can get with your hashtag, the more targeted your audience will be”, which, generally speaking, results in better engagement.

If your company doesn’t have its own hashtag, you don’t have to rattle your brain trying to come up with one just yet. No, this doesn’t mean that your post goes untagged. Why not find an existing hashtag that is applicable to your post? This way you can join other trends and drag your brand into it!

Instagram (2012) outlines how using a popular hashtag can work in your favor and your post is likely to have more exposure when you think about the trend carefully. For example instead of #van, using #vwvan will have a more specific and engaged audience.

DO be relevant

Being relevant doesn’t mean it has to be boring. You can relate your hashtag to your brand but make sure it’s relatable as well as applicable.

Toilet paper company, Charmin, are witty and clever when it comes to Tweeting and hashtagging. A humorous campaign was launched in 2013 with #tweetfromtheseat to play upon the fact that a whopping 40% of people use social media in the bathroom (Kolowich, 2014). Not so surprising but kinda weird, right? Not only fun and lighthearted, the actionable language of the hashtag encouraged tweeters to get involved… perfect to include their younger target audience (aka students). Remember to show your personality with your social media activity… display your brand image.

Although this campaign was a success, remember to be careful with potty language.

It’s all fun and games, but there is a dark side so here’s what NOT to do when using hashtags.

DON’T be carless

Entenmann’s is known for low calorie baked goods, so #notguilty seems like a relevant direction right? Well, the lack of research simply made them seem ignorant as this hashtag was already trending but based on the controversial murder verdict, Casey Anthony (Usigan, 2011). It’s still unclear whether this was a mistake or just a poor joke, but definitely a tweet worth taking down… So before setting your hashtag, make sure you are aware of the connotations in order to avoid those awkward Twitter apologies.

Another example that will make you think about what you’re trying to achieve with your hashtag is McDonalds and the #McDstories. The aim was to encourage customers to tweet their positive experiences at the fastfood chain, but this majorly backfired when people began describing negative experiences… Make sure what your enthusing is relevant and realistic. Don’t encourage Twitter complaints otherwise it may end in Twitter terror. #Awkward.

DON’T overdo it

Don’t be too complex; this will cause complications and mistakes. Sometimes the best ideas are better kept fresh so when generating your hashtag try to be organic about it.

As we’ve already established things can quickly get awkward on social media. Susan Boyle’s PR team created ‘#susanalbumparty’ to promote the singers new album, but anyone else notice anything a little off topic? Intending to hashtag “Susan-album-party” led to a very embarrassing #Fail… with a capital f. The longer your hashtag and the more you try to complicate it, the more interpretations there are likely to be. So as previously mentioned make sure you take a minute to really look at your creation (Hurlburt, 2016).

Equally, oversimplifying hashtags can result in embarrassed acronyms. Be absolutely clear about other potential meanings. Let’s just say Burger King didn’t learn this the easy way. #WTFF was originally supposed to stand for “What the French Fry”, promoting the company’s new low fat fries. However, people began using it to mean a certain other meaning, so the trend was full of tweets completely irrelevant to fries or BK! So basically no use.

Talking about interpretations, overdoing it can also mean using too many hashtags… Don’t do it, it’s likely to loose its edge. Avoid being that annoying instagrammer that #over #hashtags #everything. #hashtag.

Cooper (2013) interestingly reveals that using more than two hashtags actually shows a drop in engagement. So less is more!

To summarize…

Firstly, hashtags can indeed be very useful for your brand. It might not mean going ‘viral’ but if used correctly it could mean further exposure (Orozco, 2016)! Secondly, don’t forget how wrong hashtags can go, so keep an eye out for those #HashtagFails. Lastly, I didn’t realise one could use the word ‘hashtag’ so many times in one blog post, so apologies for that.

If you’re a hashtag lover, check out its history!

Until Next Time!

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Reference

Cooper, B.B. (2013) 10 Surprising New Twitter Stats to Help You Reach More Followers. BufferSocial. 19^th August 2013 [Online] <https://blog.bufferapp.com/10-new-twitter-stats-twitter-statistics-to-help-you-reach-your-followers> [Accessed: 5^th May 2016]

Hurlburt, B. (2016) Hashtag Fails That Are Downright Embarrassing. LoginRadius. [Image] <https://blog.loginradius.com/2015/04/hashtag-fails/> [Accessed: 3^rd May 2016]

HVnews. (2012) 10 Funniest Tweets From #McDStories Disaster. [Image] <http://hypervocal.com/news/2012/mcdonalds-tweets-twitter-mcdstories-fail/> [Accessed: 5^th May 2016]

HVnews. (2012) 10 Funniest Tweets From #McDStories Disaster. 25^th January 2012 [Online] <http://hypervocal.com/news/2012/mcdonalds-tweets-twitter-mcdstories-fail/> [Accessed: 5^th May 2016]

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Kolowich, L. (2014) The Rules of Twitter Hashtags: Hits and Misses From 7 Big Brands. Where Marketers Go To Grow. 23^rd May 2014 [Online] <http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-hashtag-campaign-examples> [Accessed: 3^rd May 2016]

LePage, E. (2014) The Do’s and Don’ts of How to Use Hashtags. Hootsuite. 27^th August 2014 [Online] <https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-use-hashtags/> [Accessed: 3^rd May 2016]

MacMillan, G. (2013) How to choose a hashtag. Twitter. 21^st August 2013 [Online] <https://blog.twitter.com/2013/how-to-choose-a-hashtag> [Accessed: 3^rd May 2016]

MarketWired. (2013) RadiumOne Finds Over 70 Percent of Consumers Favor Using Hashtags on Mobile Devices and Nearly Half Feel Motivated to Explore New Content When Hashtags Are Present. 27^th March 2013 [Online] <http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/radiumone-finds-over-70-percent-consumers-favor-using-hashtags-on-mobile-devices-nearly-1772443.htm> [Accessed: 3^rd May 2016]

Mohammad, S. & Kiritchenko, S. (2015) ‘Using Hashtags to Capture Fine Emotion Categories from Tweets’, Computational Intelligence, 31, 2, pp. 301-326

Orozco, D (2016) ‘Using Social Media in Business Disputes’, MIT Sloan Management Review, 57, 2, pp. 33-35

Shoubin, K., Fei, Y., Ling, F. & Zhe, Z. (2015) ‘Towards the Prediction Problems of Bursting Hashtags on Twitter’, Journal Of The Association For Information Science & Technology, 66, 12, pp. 2566-2579

Usigan, Y. (2011) Hashtag fail: Entenmann’s tweets #NotGuilty about eating treats (not about Casey Anthony) CBS News. 29^th August 2011 [Online] <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hashtag-fail-entenmanns-tweets-notguilty-about-eating-treats-not-about-casey-anthony/> [Accessed: 5^th May 2016]

Waddell, A. (2014) You are ridiculous with your annoying and unnecessary use of hashags. Pinterest. [Image] <https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/122441683592132097/> [Accessed: 5^th May 2016]