How To Run A Successful Multi-Platform Hashtag Campaign

Now that pretty much every social media platform supports hashtags, more and more companies are running campaigns either centred around a hashtag, or featuring one. Brands feature hashtags at the end of adverts, TV shows feature hashtags during the credits and celebrities use hashtags to advertise their appearances. In every instance, hashtags are used to drive conversation about a particular topic, but they can be used for a plethora of other reasons.

Hashtags can be used to advertise new products and campaigns, to run competitions and contests, to ask fans for their input about a company development, and to associate a brand with a popular news item. The best thing about hashtag campaigns, however, is they can be completely free. Of course, the more you (strategically) spend on a campaign, the more you will reap its rewards. Here are a few pieces of advice to follow when planning your hashtag campaigns.

Promote It:

• If you’re about to run a hashtag campaign then make sure the public know about it. Feature your hashtag in print and media advertising, or run a larger campaign with a featured hashtag. By promoting your hashtag as widely as possible, you can make sure that people will start talking about it.

• Make sure that you promote your hashtag campaigns across all the hashtag-compatible social media sites. Even if you’re running a hashtag competition on Instagram, you can still drive conversation about it on Facebook and Twitter, even if people cannot enter the competition from those sites.

• Of course, in the case of hashtags, Twitter started it all. If you’re planning on running a large hashtag campaign on Twitter, it’s a good idea to take advantage of some of the site’s advertising features to ensure a wide audience.

Make It Interactive:

• Use a hashtag that will encourage debate – a phrase that invites the public to give their opinion or make a joke. For example, Edge Shave Gel ran a campaign on Twitter asking users to say what irritated them using the hashtag #soirritating. The hashtag trended on Twitter as hundreds of users wrote quips and comments.

• You don’t even need to get involved in the conversation: Matalan advertised the hashtag #MatalanSummerTips on Twitter recently so that fans could exchange tips and hints on the site.

• You could run a picture or video campaign across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Vine, asking fans to post content around a specific hashtagged theme. Ben & Jerry’s ran the #CaptureEuphoria campaign on Instagram, inviting fans to post pictures of themselves enjoying ice cream. All the pictures were posted on a devoted microsite so that fans could view them.

• You can even engage with tweeps in innovative ways, gaining a wider audience in the process. A few weeks ago, Honda responded to a number of tweets containing the hashtag #WantNewCar with Vine videos. the campaign was very popular, catching the attention of a number of social media influencers in the process.

Be Topical:

• Create a hashtag campaign that is themed around a big event or news story. During Wimbledon, for example, sports brand adidas introduced two hashtags into the Twittersphere: #AllinforMurray and #Hitthewinner, the latter of which was also used by entrants for an online competition. #AllinforMurray was tweeted over 20,000 times during the weekend.

• People tweeted the #Hitthewinner hashtag in order to enter a competition: Murray’s fans could use the hashtag to play a real-time game during the match. To play, they had to first select an area of the court where they thought Andy would hit a winner, then tweet their guess before each set. Millions of people watched the tennis match, so, by providing fans with a way to interact during the game on Twitter, adidas ensured a large userbase. 

Give Them An Incentive:

• Create a competition where the applicants have to use a specific hashtag to enter, or one of a number of hashtags. Vodafone Netherlands recently launched #HashtagHolidays, rewarding followers with one of eight different holidays, each one based on a trending hashtag.

• Nissan recently ran a campaign which was interactive and gave competitors an incentive. Nissan asked fans to create micro-videos using the hashtag #VersaVid. They then featured some of the videos in a TV commercial, rewarding the makers of these videos with a $1000 Amazon Gift Card.

• You don’t always have to offer a big prize; instead, you can reward the best content by featuring it in a larger campaign. The best #CaptureEuphoria photos, for example, were featured on billboards and in magazines. Wendy’s is running a promotional Twitter campaign at the moment. The restaurant is creating videos featuring singer Nick Lachey and posting them online. Fans of the restaurant brand are being asked to tweet the hashtag #PretzelLoveSongs and Lachey is then incorporating these tweets into love songs about the new pretzel bacon cheeseburger. 

• You don’t always have to come up with your own hashtag either (though I suggest that you do). JELL-O recently ran a campaign using the popular hashtag #FML. The company gave small prizes to selected people who used the hashtag on Twitter. It is, however, difficult to tell how much JELL-O’s campaign permeated into the Twitter consciousness: with such a commonly used hashtag, it’s unlikely people would have associate JELL-O with #FML. 

Conclusion:
Every month, companies are thinking of new, innovative ways of using hashtags to promote their brands on social media. If you haven’t used hashtags yet, then I advise you start: introduce a hashtag to a campaign you are running currently, or incorporate a hashtag into a campaign you’re planning at the moment. If you’re new to hashtag campaigns, make sure that you experiment a little first by trying out hashtags on various platforms. A number of campaigns have gone awry because people didn’t check their hashtags, the most famous being, of course, Susan Boyle’s #susanalbumparty. The most important thing to remember, however, when you’re running a hashtag campaign, is to use the right hashtag: one that is relevant, catchy, unique and not too long.

How do you use hashtags to promote your brand on social media?

How To Use Google+ Hashtags To Help Your Business

Google+ introduced hashtags, along with a number of other new features, last month in an effort to make the Google+ feed a little deeper and more interesting. Hashtags on Google+ are very similar to those on Twitter and now Facebook: you can use them to find, start and join conversations about specific topics. However, Google+ hashtags are slightly different to their Twitter counterparts.

The Google+ stream interface allows for different kinds of hashtag engagement than on Twitter: instead of taking you to a different hashtag-specific stream, clicking on a Google+ hashtag will flip you through other similarly hashtagged posts in-stream. Like Twitter, Google+ will also show you related hashtags – other hashtags that have been used in posts alongside the hashtag originally clicked on.

Of course, you can search for a Google+ hashtag, just as you would on Twitter, and all the relevant posts will appear in the stream. Google+ gives you the option to arrange hashtagged posts chronologically, or see the “Best of” posts at the top of your stream. I’m not entirely certain what qualifies posts to make it into the “Best of” stream. Supposedly, it takes into account the amount of engagement a post has received and its timing, but it might also – considering it’s a Google product – take SEO into account (after all, Google+ does intuitively search articles for key terms on order to add hashtags).

Google+ will also intuitively add hashtags to posts if it thinks that they are relevant. Google explains how these hashtags will differ from those you add yourself in the support pages:

Hashtags with grey colouring are those used by the author of the post while hashtags with blue colouring are added by Google based on the content of the post.

 I advise that, even though Google will suggest hashtags, you include hashtags in all your Google+ posts. Make sure that they are relevant to the topic. It’s best practice to include three hashtags: the first three hashtags are displayed at the top of each post and affect what searches posts show up in, as well as what other posts they are related to. Order your hashtags by preference, starting with the one you think is the most important/relevant, as this will also affect searches. You can include more hashtags if you want, but the first three are given far more weight than the others.

Search for and use hashtags that are popular and relevant to join conversations. Be careful though, the way hashtagged posts are displayed in the stream, where you can flip from one post to another, puts posts in direct competition with one another: users with only enough time to read one article will flick between a couple before choosing their preference. It is imperative, then, that you check out the competition before you post your hashtagged content, as well as ensuring that your content is as attractive in the stream as possible (nice image, catchy title etc.).

Naturally, you’ll hope that your posts appear in the “Best of” stream. As this is mostly down to engagement on the site, the best way to achieve this is by posting good content. On the other hand, you should also be timing your posts to perfection to ensure that they appear high up in the “Most recent” stream. Experiment with timing: do you want to join the conversation at its peak and risk your post getting lost in the chatter, or do you want to enter conversations as they lull and risk an apathetic reaction? Of course, this depends primarily on the conversations you are joining.

Ideally, you want to be starting conversations, so staying abreast of news relevant to your industry and reacting quickly to it is an intelligent strategy. It is at this point that related hashtags become very important: if you can join a conversation with your first hashtag, then pique the interest of those in the conversation with your second, you can not just start a conversation, but lead it as well, taking it onto a subject that may help you promote your brand.

For example, say you wanted to promote your company’ new zero-emissions car, you could search #zeroemissions and discover what other relevant subjects people were talking about. Let’s presume, in the same week as you release your car, a bill gets passed in the US Senate pledging to cut national carbon emissions by 50% in 2015 and, as a result, #carbonemissionsbill becomes a popular conversation on Google+.

You could be obvious and post an article about the car with both the #zeroemissions and #carbonemissionsbill, or you could try to turn the conversation onto zero-emissions vehicles, by, for instance, asking the Google+ community how they think the car trade will be affected by the bill, suggesting that zero-emissions vehicles might be the way to go; that way, you can include both the #carbonemissionsbill and the #zeroemissions hashtags. After starting a conversation about the zero-emissions and the car trade, post an announcement article about your car, using the #zeroemissions hashtag but not the #carbonemissions bill. It’s a risky strategy, granted, dependent on a lot of things going your way, but using related hashtags on Google+ in such a way might turn out to be one of the least invasive but most successful advertising tactics on social media to date.

Google+ hashtags are still in their early stages and, even though everyone is used to them on Twitter, the Google+ equivalent is a new and different animal. The strategy I outlined above is so risky and untested that it may never work, but hashtags – the way they are displayed in-stream – open up a number of avenues for experimentation, providing businesses with a brand new way to drive conversations online.

How have you used Google+ hashtags to help your business?