Don’t Let The #Hashtag Scare You!

What is a hashtag? If you can explain this to your grandmother, then you have a pretty good understanding as to what a hashtag actually is. If not, a hashtag is a keyword or phrase without spaces strung together with the “#” symbol at the beginning of the watchword(s).

Chris Messina used the first hashtag back in 2007 on social media outlet Twitter. Messina sought to gather discussion and online exchanges by deploying this new concept that took over. His first ‘tweet’: “how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamps [msg]?”

First and foremost, using capitalized or low-case letters with hashtags has no affect on your search results. Some networks like Google+ will sometimes automatically hashtag your posts if keywords are obvious in your verbiage.

The main thing to remember when using this new search method is to not overdue hashtags! Using an odd number of hashtags has the best results on every social media outlet, 30 hashtags has the best results when it comes to Instagram. Remember not to overburden your posts with hashtags on Facebook though; using 5 hashtags is visually pleasing and still meets the odd number count.

Keep in mind that your brand exists in the real world. Make sure a brand campaign is quick and easy to understand or it will be ignored immediately. Use hashtags that are trending or that people are previously familiar with. Sometimes creating your own hashtags will be catchy, but probably not unless you are a celebrity or social media guru.

Use hashtags to interact with people. Reward regular activity by taking a hashtag and creating a photo from that hashtag to repost. Videos are also great and viewers love videos because they are more personable. Hashtag interaction is especially useful when creating a new product, service, brand or image. Ask people what they think, what is not attractive, and how to improve in the design process.

Social media is not about getting out there in terms of sharing, but for the cause of actually literally interacting with people. Hashtags are the modern day voice of the people.