By Naomi Dolin-Aubertin
#Hashtag #What'sItAllAbout Hashtags are used all over social media, from Twitter and Facebook to Instagram. Many businesses are turning or have already turned to social media to market their products and engage with their customers. And hashtags are a great marketing tool for your business.
First of all, hashtags are a way of entering into a global conversation about a subject. They allow people to engage with one another on a particular topic. For instance, if you search #ValentinesDay on Twitter today, you will see a plethora of tweets. So if you are a florist or chocolatier this time of year, adding that or a number of other trending hashtags to your tweet brings you into the conversation and could generate increased business.
In fact, some designers are selling products at New York Fashion Week in exchange for social currency. Social currency is
represented in the resulting value and sentiment that stems from the exchange of social objects: words, videos, reactions, links. What I publish is social currency. We can measure the value of this currency in each exchange by its reach, resonance, and ultimately influence. [1]
So what you post to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social networking sites creates an online user profile that it valuable to businesses in terms of marketing leverage, because people tend to trust product and service recommendations from friends over advertisements. "In exchange for Facebook posts, tweets and Instagram photos, customers can get goodies from Marc Jacobs, like necklaces and perfumes and purses." [2] Fascinatingly, they found that one customer tweet about a product could generate $20 in sales. "A customer that's tweeting on your behalf,” Atkinson explains, “creates more capital value for you, for sure. So you always want to find ways to get your communities to promote your product." [3] These tweets and posts are seen as more genuine because they aren't advertisements. It turns into a quantifiable equation: #freestuff #marketing #moresales
https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/57dzaMaouXA&source=udsWhen using hashtags in your social media posts, it's always good to keep in mind what types of hashtags will provide the most benefit to your business. #cloudcomputing will have a greater chance of being seen than #thecloudisawesome. It's also judicious to keep your use of hashtags to a minimum. With only 140 characters on Twitter, adding too many hashtags will only confuse and annoy your audience and will probably cause them to skip over future tweets. Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake illustrate this to hilarious effect in this video. Too many hashtags are #annoying.
(Warning: video contains some language not suitable for children and/or some workplaces).
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