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Hashtags are everywhere and seemed to spring out of nowhere. Seems like just a couple years ago, we were first beginning to see hashtags appear. And no one knew how to use them right. Even today, people will post a picture of their puppy accompanied by a tag like #shessocutewithaballinhermouth and #icantbelieveshesgottensobig. While these sorts of tags provide some people with a moment of entertainment and almost literal LOL, they just shouldn’t be done. Apparently, how to use hashtags isn’t as obvious as most people would think. The purpose of using a hashtag isn’t just to look cool or be trendy; hashtags need to have an actual strategy behind them. 

Why Should You Create a Hashtag Strategy?

Because hashtags should never be done haphazardly and can benefit your business if done right—and only if done right, unless you have amazing luck. 

A good hashtag strategy can:

• Help you measure your success
• Gain followers by increasing brand awareness
• Engage your audience with your brand

Hashtags were originally started on Twitter as a way to group conversations together and have since then branched out onto other social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Don’t worry about looking silly for beginning a hashtag campaign. People won’t think you’re just trying to be cool and hip—your main audience won’t anyways because they’re so used to seeing hashtags everywhere. They won’t think twice about your use of a hashtag because hashtags have become such a natural normality in our daily lives. So don’t let fear stop you. Join the #conversation.

How Do you Start a Hashtag Campaign?

Obviously with a strategy. Start there. What do you want to achieve with your hashtag campaign? Do you want more followers, more engagement? Then think of a phrase that will represent that goal. Remember that your hashtag is your brand—an extension of it, anyways. Choose wisely, because if you do it right, this hashtag should stick with you for a while. To make a hashtag strategy process, you have to start with a hashtag, do your research, double-check your phrasing, use them in moderation, and start joining in on the trending conversations. 

Establish Your Hashtag

Some brands choose their tagline as their hashtag (Nike with #JustDoIt), and others come up with clever tags related to their brand to stir up some harmless conversation (Charmin with #TweetFromTheSeat). You can choose to have a brand hashtag for all-year use as well as a campaign hashtag for a temporary campaign.

• Make sure you like your brand’s hashtag. Unless you want to confuse people or lose them in the process, once you have your hashtag you should stick to it. 
• Never throw out a random hashtag to accompany your well thought out, expensive campaign. Hashtags have a purpose and shouldn’t be tacked on as an afterthought. 
• Consider your hashtag’s length. You want to give your audience something short enough that they can remember and simple enough that they won’t misspell.
• Make it unique. If someone else has your hashtag, it will do nothing for you. 
• Use capital letters as necessary to clear up any confusion of what you’re saying. 

Do Your Research

Once you think you know what your hashtag is, don’t start throwing it all over your social media just yet. There are a couple more steps it needs to go through: research and proofreading. First, you have to pay attention to other tags already being used and know what they are being used for. This applies to both using a hashtag for yourself as well as to posting anything with another hashtag. 

In the case of your own hashtag, you don’t want to get lost in the wrong conversation. What search results will come up with your hashtag? If it’s unrelated to your brand, you may want to stay away. 

One brand a few years ago, Entenmanns, started a hashtag campaign with #notguilty to promote eating healthy and not being guilty of eating fattening foods. Unfortunately, they did so at the same time as Casey Anthony’s trial. #notguilty was already trending for different reasons than low-calorie foods. Talk about awkward. 

Watch Your Phrasing

Hashtags are basically a bunch of words jammed together without any spaces. Sometimes this causes problems. Like the famous hashtag fail with Susan Boyle’s new album release: #susanalbumparty. This hashtag makes sense and could have worked for innocent readers. But hardly anyone who can read these days is that innocent. Instead of “Susan Album Party,” everyone focused on the middle: “anal bump”—probably not the attention they were going for, but it definitely became a trending topic. The issue was fixed and changed to #SusanBoylesAlbumParty, but the damage was already done. 

Look at your hashtag from every angle. Can it be read wrong? Read it out loud and in your head. Try to form other words and think immaturely. You can never be too careful. 

Use Hashtags Only in Moderation

Have you ever seen those posts that have a string of ten hashtags on them? Or how about the #posts that have #hashtags after #every other #word? Everything in moderation—that’s the only way to go with just about everything in life. While tweets with hashtags get two times more engagement than tweets without, tweets with two or more hashtags get 17% less engagement. The more hashtags you have, the less focused it is. Also, social media sites tend to view lots of hashtags as spammy, meaning the most hashtags you should ever use in one post is two.

Join the Conversation

Once you have a hashtag that gets you the right kind of attention, you can start beginning conversations for your audience to get involved in as well as gain new followers by joining other conversations. To join other conversations, look up hashtags that are trending or popular and are related to your brand and use it in a post. People who don’t follow you will end up discovering you, and you have a chance to get a conversion going. Just don’t start using every trending topic out there. Twitter will end up blocking your account. If you need help finding tags related to your brand, try looking at hashtagify.me to find popular hashtags similar brands are using. 

Hashtags are nothing to mess around with lightly. They have the ability to uplift brands as well as tear them down. Which hashtag campaigns have worked? The ones with strategies. The ones that were built purposefully and with awareness. So when you go to begin your hashtag strategy, think. Do your research. Read it carefully. And never let your guard down, even when harmlessly joining in on a hashtag conversation. You never know what someone else out there is thinking or saying. 

Before you start building your hashtag strategy, you might want to take a look at these hashtag fails so you’ll know what you could be up against if you don’t put some thought into your campaign.  

Or if you need help getting started, call us today to launch your marketing strategy.

Titan Web Marketing Solutions based in Murfreesboro, TN provides Social Media Marketing for businesses throughout the United States. If your company needs social media help Contact Us today.