Am sure you would have come across the recent news where a couple named their baby as ‘Hashtag‘. While we can debate endlessly about it, it’s apparent that hashtag have become very important part of engagement these days. When Pam Moore recently did this post about Hashtags, it was evident that hashtags are one of the most highly misunderstood, misused or even under-used commodity of our time.
Hash tags came into focus early on with Twitter where you could indicate a subject or categorize discussion by adding a # sign before the word and since then, they have been popularly used by other platform – Google+, Instagram & Pinterest.
This indicates how important hash tags are for modern day communication on Twitter or G+ or even Instagram and this post will show 5 ways to leverage Hashtags.
Tips
- Shorter Hashtag – It would be worthwhile to have smaller hashtag, remember on Twitter you only have 140 chars to play with and if you use a bigger tag, then you can even lesser number of characters for your message. Better to have something like #SEOTalk rather than having #SearchEngineOptimizationTalk
- Capitalize Words – If the hashtags consists of multiple words, make sure you capitalize each word so that it is easier for the reader to decipher. Example: use #ThisIsHashtag instead of #thisishashtag
How to leverage hashtags?
- Twitter Chats – One of the best way hashtags can be leveraged is to use it for Twitter Chats. Websites like TweetChat & SeeSaw even enable you to follow a particular hashtag and take part in the conversations without explicitly typing the tag.
- Promotional Campaigns – Irrespective of the platform, a brand can share messages using a particular hashtag and can engage with readers easily.
- Monitoring Conversations – These days you can even see content producers use hashtag during TV shows. While it does help them engage viewers beyond the show, it also makes it easier for them to track conversations for a particular show and run analytics around it.
- Contests – We recently had the Guns N’ Roses band visit India and I had covered an interesting contest by Lipton Ice Tea. They just used the #JoinGNR tag and invited the audience to play a game and win passes. Similarly, Brisk Ice Tea leveraged hashtag on Instagram where the user stood a chance to get their photo inscribed on their mug.
- Live Events – You can use hashtags to cover live events across multiple platforms. The trend is to have hashtag shared by the organisers, so that it makes it easier to attendees or even outside audience to network virtually beyond the event. Even for the organisers, it would be easy to track sentiment across the event.
Your turn
So which tags do you commonly use?
What other ways have you identified that hashtags can be leveraged?
Share you views using the COMMENTS below…
Photo Credit: Scott Beale via photopin cc
