#youredoingitwrong - How To Do It Right
By Scott Robertson
I’m going to do my best to get through this without hashtagging everything, we’ll see how that turns out.
Be On Topic
We all know what hashtags are, well for the sake of argument most of us do. #theyreeverywhere
Over the last few years hashtags have moved increasingly into our digital dialog. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest - they’re all over the online landscape. They range from the silly like #mcm (Man Crush Monday) to a major world events #RussiainvadedUkraine. For those unfamiliar, the hashtag combines posts containing it into one running narrative, allowing social media site users to see focussed content on a certain topic. So the question then is: what is the best way to harness that attention and use it to the advantage of my brand?
The starting point for this deals with situation and relevancy. Far too often have I seen a business try to use a hashtag that had nothing to do with their brand or message. An example of this might be “Our prices will make you sing. Come to Tire Place and let us prove it. #tireplace #grammys”. Is it the worst thing ever? Of course not, but it’s a shameless attempt to make a connection between your brand and something that has nothing to do with it. Many users are sophisticated enough to reject things like that, plus it’s putting your Tire Place plug in the middle of a string of tweets or whatnot about an award show. They don’t want to see an ad for a tire place that may be in a different state, possibly even country. It’s ineffective when not done the right way.
Now, if you were a place that sold the albums featured in the award show it makes a lot more sense to get involved with that hashtag. It’s also possible to attempt starting your own hashtag. Large companies do that frequently with a good amount of buy-in from users. As a small business this may be a possibility for you. If you have something particularly important happen with your business or community it is possible to get users to play along, but in general try to avoid starting your own hashtag.
Keep It Simple
Another trap people fall into is using hashtags as commentary for what they just said. #iknowyouknowwhatimtalkingabout And while we’re on this topic, don’t do what I just did there. Keep hashtags limited to 1-3 words. It gets a bit harder to read when it’s strung out like a short sentence, plus it eats up extra character space you could be using to engage your customers. But I digress. I will admit that I am rather loose with this rule on personal use, as you may have noticed, but I wouldn’t do that if I represented a business, you shouldn’t either. As I mentioned above the main purpose of hashtags is to join a bigger conversation on a specific topic. Throwing a hashtag out with a string of words will likely put you in a conversation, let’s face it it’s the internet, but it will be far more limited and probably not do much for you. Aim for hashtags that will place you in a conversation people are interested in having. Make a relevant contribution to that narrative and possibly receive attention for it.
Less Is More
The other persisting issue people have with hashtags is their over use. If you’ve been anywhere near more popular entities on Instagram you’ve seen this in full effect, mostly from the fans of said popular entities. For those not in the know about this some social media users, often of a younger demographic, will post a statement or picture to their medium of choice and follow it with an absurd number of hashtags. This use of social media is fine for a personal account, though web-etiquette tends to look unfavorably at these posts, but it should be avoided for your business account. A string of hashtags limits the characters available to you to make your connection with a customer through your content. Hashtag overkill also makes your brand look immature and not up to speed with how the internet works. If you are going to use a hashtag, and I personally recommend using them sparingly, keep it limited to one. Two if you absolutely have to but anything over that works against you.
So the moral of the story is use hashtags as part of your plan to engage customers through social media. Join appropriate conversations, make relevant contributions, and don’t overdo it. #bestofluck
Have any questions? Comments? Did I miss something? Please feel free to contact the team and I at socialmedia@prosites.com
Tags: Hashtag, Hashtags, How-to, Social media marketing