Think Before You Hashtag: Creating #Success
Hashtags are a great way of finding related social content, organizing messages by topic/type, and furthering the reach of our social posts. Twitter’s own research shows that using hashtags can increase engagement for individuals by 100% (2x) and 50% (1.5x) for brands. With the ability to expand the reach of our messaging beyond our normal audience, using hashtags should be something everyone looks to do in their messaging. But like all marketing executions, research before deployment can be the difference between success and #fail.
#Relevance
When choosing a hashtag, you want to pick one that is relevant. Far too many times companies pick a hashtag simply because it’s trending or because it’s commonly used. If your messaging and content aren’t related to the hashtag you’re using, you’re unlikely to see a boost in the reach of your message because people searching for that tag aren’t finding what they were looking for when they come across your message. Think of a Google search. When you enter a query and scroll through the results, what do you do when you come across one that seems to have nothing to do with what you were searching for? Do you click it and hope it turns out to be relevant or do you move on to one that makes a lot more sense?
Like any conversation, real or virtual, you need to make sure you’re being relevant. The guy at the dinner party that jumps in the conversation in with a comment on the political climate in Micronesia when everyone else is talking about the Super Bowl is out of place and likely to get a less-than desirable reaction, just as using the wrong hashtag for your messaging will. Pick make-sense hashtags and be part of a relevant conversation.
#Volume
In addition to picking hashtags that are relevant to your messaging, it’s also important to make sure they’re actually being used. The topic of social hashtags may be an relevant to our topic but the tag #SocialHashtags wouldn’t get you far, as it sees essentially zero use and if no one is searching for it, your message won’t be found. To find hashtags that are more commonly used and more likely to be searched for, social tools can help.
My favorite hashtag tool for finding tags that see frequent use is Hashtagify. This free tool allows you to check your hashtag to see its popularity. By running a search and using the Table Mode, we can see how popular the tag is on a scale of 1 – 100. It will also show related hashtags. You may find that there is a more popular tag related to the one you’d originally chosen, which would give your message a better chance of discovery.
Using this tool, we find that #SocialHashtags is unused to the point that it doesn’t even track it. Instead we’d consider the more popular hashtag #SocialMedia as it’s still relevant but also sees high usage and hopefully high search volume as seen above (I say hopefully high on the search volume as there is no way of knowing how often a tag is searched for like the Google Keyword Tool would provide, so we have to hope that highly used tags also see higher volume of search traffic too).
Relevance is important but picking a keyword that also sees wide-spread usage is equally essential in the success of your hashtag. By researching your hashtag choice, you can find one that aligns with your message and also allows it to be seen as part of the larger conversation around the topic.
#DoubleMeaning
When picking a hashtag, make sure it means only what it’s intended to mean. While it seems like commonsense, many companies have made fools of themselves by picking hashtags that can be interpreted in another way. When Susan Boyle released her album, the company promoting it thought they’d promote the album party with the hashtag #susanalbumparty. See the alternative interpretation? When Blackberry makers RIM wanted to announce they were hiring, the hashtag #RIMjobs was chosen. A job at RIM wasn’t what most though of when they saw it.
Before you run with a tag, run it by your coworkers. Make sure they don’t see something in it that you didn’t. A quick search for the hashtag on Twitter will give you an idea of the context in which the tag is being used. Make sure it’s the usage you were intending. Many companies tweeting about point-of-sale may be surprised to find that most people using #POS aren’t talking about the same thing they are.
You may also want to run a quick search of Urban Dictionary and web search to find out if your tag means something you hadn’t thought of. While not a hashtag, a friend recently had his custom license plate NULLOBJ denied. While he’d intended it to be a computer programming reference, it would seem that Urban Dictionary cites interesting and much more inappropriate meanings for NULLO and BJ which could also be interpreted from his desired plate. Make sure you know all the possible meanings of your tag of choice.
#Success
Picking the right hashtag does take a bit more thinking than simply picking a currently trending tag or the first thing that comes to mind. There is a bit of research involved and a bit of thinking outside of your own intentions. Though more work is required, the return should be much greater too. Picking the proper hashtag is often the difference between a successfully getting your message to a greater audience and ending up on with egg on your face.
