The effective use of hashtags - and impressing examples

Last week's lecture, amongst others, covered the correct use of hashtags and their advantages in every-day use. That made me think of successful hashtag-campaigns and the creative process behind deciding what neologism to use.

#makeitcount by Nike
In 2012 and 2013, Nike ran the "Make it count"-hashtag campaign, promoting eleven athletes and their personal statements about success, which in some way always fit into Nike's overall marketing-scheme. All the statements were written on black-and-white photographs of the athletes which also contained the hashtag #makeitcount. In class we discussed the way hashtags get popular. They can't be advertised for, no one would ask their followers to use their new hashtag. Hashtags must be catchy and connected with a special kind of lifestyle or feeling. All those requirements were met with the Nike #makeitcount tag.

Picture by: The Inspiration Room

#twEATfor1k by Wendy's
In order to promote their new Flatbread Grilled Chicken, Wendy's asked their customers to take "foodporn"-pictures of their Grilled Chicken and to post it on social media with the hashtag #twEATfor1k in order to win a thousand dollars. Obviously this campaign was a little more expensive than other social media campaigns who tend to have the advantage of being very cheap (the customers basically do all the work) but the goal was met to bring the new product to light and to have people spreading the word.

Picture by: The Real Time Report

How to create meaningful ad widely used hashtags?

According to the Twitter blog, there are certain basic points to consider when using hashtags:

• We want to increase the audience of our tweets, we want to further spread our message
• If our hashtag doesn't already exist (most likely), it must be easy to understand
• Tweets containing this particular hashtag should be interesting at least to our target demographic group and users who aren't familiar with our brand yet.

When creating a hashtag, we have the possibility of incentivising the use of the hashtag, as it was the case with Wendy's. If it's not incentivised, we should better use the hashtag in other promotional campaigns such as TV or radio ads. The next step would be the production of a large amount of content. We must not overexert our followers with too many posts on one day and too few on the other. A steady feed of tweets works best, as well as a substantial amount of re-tweets, to get in contact with our customers.

And finally, success doesn't just develop over night. Retaining brand awareness requires a long-term strategy with long-term content production.