The 4 Tenets of Selecting a Killer Hashtag for Your Social Campaign
Whether you are hosting a contest, event or merely branding your business on social, there’s a lot in a name. A poorly chosen hashtag can make a brand or organization look uninformed and amateur, or even worse, land them in a serious PR crisis. It can also prove detrimental to a particular campaign if it flops. As the debate on whether or not hashtags are a dying breed continues, for now they’re here to stay and we have a few foolproof ways to pick a good one.
1. Research
Make sure you run some thorough Twitter searches to ensure no one is using your desired hashtag. The number of tweets that show up in the results using desired hashtag and the date of posting should be good indicators of whether or not you have a green light or need to go back to the drawing board. It is also worth a shot to check out what your competitors are doing and their recent social campaigns to help you inform your own strategy—whether for better or for worse. There is a lot to be gleaned from the successes or failures of others.
Make sure you run some thorough Twitter searches to ensure no one is using your desired hashtag. The number of tweets that show up in the results using desired hashtag and the date of posting should be good indicators of whether or not you have a green light or need to go back to the drawing board. It is also worth a shot to check out what your competitors are doing and their recent social campaigns to help you inform your own strategy—whether for better or for worse. There is a lot to be gleaned from the successes or failures of others.
2. ClevernessSocial marketing tends to be about thinking outside the proverbial box; what are some creative ways you can play on your campaign messaging that aren’t too obvious yet tie in to your brand’s objectives? Hold a brainstorm with your digital and/or marketing team and let the ideas flow. Don’t worry about looking foolish, sometimes it’s that foolish kernel of an idea that explodes into something truly amazing. The hashtag you select is not a standalone concept, it will be integrated into your entire cross-platform campaign so choose wisely. In some cases, it could even be part of your brand for a very long time. Pro Tip: Don’t wait until the night before your campaign launches to come up with your hashtag.
3. BrevityThis might seem obvious due to Twitter’s well known character restrictions, but you’d be surprised at how many times I’ve seen people screw this up. People are a LOT less likely to engage with your hashtag if it’s lengthy and it leaves them less space to do so. You’re literally setting yourself up for failure if you don’t respect peoples’ character limits. Brief doesn’t have to mean “dumbing it down”; keeping things simple can sometimes be a lot harder and if it takes you a little longer to synthesize your messaging, so be it. It’ll be worth it in the long run!
4. Troll-ProofMake no mistake about it—the Internet can be a very unforgiving place when it comes to marketing and PR fails and it’s critical to examine your strategy and launch plan, hashtag included, from every angle to ensure it’s not easily “remixed” in an unflattering and potentially harmful way. While it’s virtually impossible to avoid trolls altogether, there are definitely ways to minimize risk. There are countless examples of the rogue denizens of the Twitterverse taking corporate hashtags and completely turning them on their head, creating headlines and chaos in real-time. Famous examples include the epic #McDStories bashtag and most recently the #myNYPD fail that exploded on Twitter.
Safeguard your hashtag from being hijacked as best as you can before you launch; you can learn more about defending against Twitter attacks and response strategies in our eBook Bashtagged. Brands also need to be equally careful when “hashtag surfing” or “hashtag jumping”—the practice of using trending topics out of their original context to increase their own exposure. This can be a great success when done properly, but can end up going horribly wrong if not left in the hands of someone with a strong moral code, as seen in this unfortunate example from U.S. baked good pusher Entenmann’s.
There you have it! Four important componen
