A few months ago, Facebook announced they
were going to begin supporting hashtags, joining the ranks of Twitter, Google+ , Pinterest,
Instagram, YouTube and other social media networks. Social Media lingo defines
hashtags as keywords or phrases with the prefix “#” in front of them (i.e.
Thank you for Liking #uMnoVuConcepts). Sometimes words are mashed together,
sometimes they’re independent. The hashtag essentially works as a filter — a
way to see all responses that have included that specific word or phrase.
A new survey
from ad platform RadiumOne found that 58 percent of respondents utilize
hashtags on a regular basis, and 71 percent of regular hashtag users do so from
their mobile devices. As the humble hashtag has become more ubiquitous brands
have found more creative ways to use them and here are five ways how your brand can benefit from using the hashtag.
#Promotions
This little symbol levels the playing field between
SMEs and big business with humongous marketing budgets, since the barrier to
launching and driving a campaign is simply your imagination. Hashtags also make
it easy to track a promotion’s activity across all social platforms. For an
example, we (uMnoVu Concepts) are currently promoting Tiyas’ song
titled #MyKryptonite. Those of you whom grew up watching the comic character
“Superman” are familiar with the word “Kryptonite”, those of you whom don’t
know what it is; a Kryptonite is a crystal stone which possesses the ultimate
weakening effect over superman. Tiyas borrowed the same concept by
writing a song for the Lady in his life, in which he expresses that his
Lady has the same power over him just as a Kryptonite has over Superman. Now,
hashtagging the song’s title (#MyKryptonite) gives us the leverage of
connecting people that know of Superman’s Kryptonite with our Tiyas’ song and
at the same time connect consumers of our his music with the conversations
on Superman’s Kryptonite. Secondly, we are able to track consumers opinion on
the concept of the song plus the production of the song.
If my point above has made you grow an interest of
the song, please feel free to download it here.
#Unification
Since all of the major social networks are now
supporting hashtags new tools like Tagboard
are cropping up, which allow you to track a hashtag across all the major
networks or filter them individually. How nice that you can promote your
#NewProduct and engage with customers across all platforms without having to
create special landing pages or campaign for each. Since the hashtag can be
your own brand or product, you can very easily filter out the noise of the
masses.
#Conversation
Of course, sometimes you want to see what the
masses are saying. According to the RadiumOne survey, 43 percent of respondents
think hashtags are useful and 34% use them to search/follow categories and
brands of personal interest. Giving your customer your website URL doesn’t make
it easy to begin a conversation, but hashtags do.
#Targeting
New marketing tools allow you to advertise based on
hashtags. Twitter obviously lets you target ads on
their network by category or interest, but so do other marketing
firms. Unlike going after a general web surfer on the open web, people who use
hashtags are likely those who are engaging in the social conversation and
therefore more likely to share a positive experience with your brand once
you’ve broken through.
#Innovation
It’s important to remember that the uses of
hashtags are still in their infancy. Because they’re so flexible, simple and
ubiquitous, more brands are finding creative ways to add power behind the
hashtag. Now that hashtags have joined the billion-user Facebook platform,
expect to see even more innovation around the hashtag before the year is over.
