12 Jul #SocialMediaMarketing The Right Way
Ah, the elusive hashtag.
We all saw Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake do it, and they made it seem effortless (and pretty funny).
But the reality is, there’s a time, place and way to use hashtags to market your business – and it can be incredibly effective.
It’s simple: hashtagging allows people who share common interests to connect on social media.
So, if you want people to connect with your company, a hashtag is a great catalyst.
All you need is a strategy and a target. To give you a head start on getting your hashtag strategy locked down, the team at Brower Group has put together four quick steps:
1. Make it legible, and understandable.
The goldfish-size attention span of today’s typical social media user doesn’t allow for too much interpretation.
If your audience can’t read and understand it right away, it’s not a good hashtag.
Make it succinct, put some thought into it, and by all means, get another set of eyes on it to avoid any hashtag mishaps. Take the #susanalbumparty incident for instance. #fail.
2. Target it.
Whether your entire brand has its own hashtag or you’re running a promotion with one, it should always be reflective of your brand’s positioning. And keep your target audience in mind when hashtag crafting – you always want to touch on the common interests of the specific people you want to attract.
Pedialyte recently made an interesting target switch – they’ve gone from marketing to moms with sick kids, to marketing to hungover adults. How’d they do this? The hashtag, #seethelyte. Adult Pedialyte usage has increased by 57%!
3. Keep it relevant.
Use hashtags that reference current trends or happenings, or, if you’re too busy to keep up with the ever-changing times, you can see a list of “trending” hashtags on Twitter’s home page. Use this to reference what people are talking about, and stay relevant.
The United Nations’ #TheWorldNeedsMore campaign helped to generate recognition of World Humanitarian Day, asking people on that day to use their hashtag to tell everyone what the world needs more of, and they received more than 46,500 tweets
4. Make it actionable.
This is how hashtags go viral. Take these three highly effective hashtag campaigns as an example:
Charmin’s #TweetFromTheSeat campaign promoted using the hashtag while Tweeting from the, well, “seat.” And people sure did.
The ALS #IceBucketChallenge prompted people to dump ice on their heads, make a donation, and post a video with the hashtag to support the ALS Association, and they raised $4 million and gained widespread popularity.
Domino’s Pizza U.K. offered to cut the price of their pepperoni pizza by one pence every time someone tweeted the hashtag #letsdolunch. After 85,000 tweets, the price dropped from £15.99 to £7.74, and Domino’s offered that price from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. that day.
What do these successful campaigns have in common? They all encourage their audience to take action. Without a purpose, no one has a reason to use your hashtag.
If you think you’re ready to start ‘tagging, get out there and #SpreadTheWord.
If not, let us give you some ideas.