Creating a Hashtag to Build Engagement at Your Event

You can now find them on every major social network (excluding LinkedIn), and more than likely, your customers or clients are already using them in some way or another.

There really are many ways that you can use hashtags for your business’s social media marketing, but in the interest of time, I’m going to focus solely on using them for your events.

Why should I use a hashtag for my event?

As a business owner, you may be putting on all kinds of events to show your expertise and acquire new clients or customers! It’s time to use hashtags to increase awareness and the visibility of your events.

By including a hashtag in your promotions, commentary, and post-event thank yous, you’re not only pulling a conversation together, but you’re also making it easy for people to find photos and attendee interactions with your event.

How do I choose a hashtag?

Your event hashtag should be:

• Unique: Search Twitter for the hashtag you have in mind. If it has been used recently, you will need to rethink it. If not, have at it!
• Short: Remember, on Twitter you only have 140 characters to use. Because that’s where most of the conversation will be taking place, you need to make sure to keep your hashtag short.
• Related: Your hashtag should reflect your event. Ex: Small Business Week (#SBW2013) or the World Cup (#WorldCup).
• Memorable: You want your attendees to use this hashtag when they are talking about your event. This means that you want them to be able to remember what hashtag is associated with the event, without them having to try and find it every time they want to talk about your event.

How will anyone know about my hashtag?

Similar to any other marketing campaign, if you do not properly promote it no one will know it exists. The same goes for your new hashtag.

Your hashtag should be everywhere! But let’s break it down a little more:

Before your event

1. Build awareness: Your hashtag should be included in all social promotions of your event.
2. Listen: Track your hashtag on social sites so you can thank people who use your hashtag when mentioning that they’ll be attending your event (or better yet, promoting your event for you).
3. Be visible: Make sure to include your event hashtag on your registration page, informing attendees to “Join the Conversation.”

During your event

1. Create conversations: Use a program like tweetbeam.com (that’s my favorite) to project the conversation on a screen. This will entice others to join the conversation during your event.
2. Invite: Have any and all of your speakers announce the hashtag and point out your tweetbeam stream.
3. Join in: Make sure to engage with your attendees who are using the hashtag. Retweet them and ask questions. Just make sure you’re not too invasive. This is not the place for you to advertise your business.

Tip – Don’t think you’ll have time to engage during the event? Schedule a couple tweets around your event content before the event begins.

After your event

1. Write digital thank you cards: You now have a social list of all of your engaged attendees. Take the time to thank them individually for joining you at your event.

   Tip – Make sure to follow all of them and create a list specifically for event attendees so you can remember who they are down the road

2. Keep the conversation going: Continue to follow the hashtag until the conversation dies. You’ll be surprised how much people will continue to talk about a great event. Continue to retweet and mention the pieces of great content your attendees are sharing.
3. Gather multimedia from the event: Searching for your hashtag on individual social networks or using a program like Storify to pull all networks together allows you to view all images and/or videos that were shared (along with all other great content) around your event.

Tip – This content can be used for a new Facebook album or Pinterest Board. 

How do I manage my event hashtag?

Hashtags can be very visible, just like all social promotions. Moderating is the key to a successful hashtag. The last thing you want is someone promoting your event, or worse, asking you a question about your event and no one is there to answer.

Managing events can be hard enough, so make sure you create a plan to also manage your event hashtag.

Tip – Creating a stream specifically for this hashtag on a platform like Hootsuite can really help you keep track of the conversation. 

Does using a hashtag expose my business to spam?

Yes, it can. However, you should pat yourself on the back if this happens. The only time you’ll find spammers using a specific hashtag is if it’s a “trending hashtag.”

A trending hashtag is a hashtag that is being used more than they were previously. The trending list is on Twitter to help people find “breaking news” from across the world in real-time.

So if you’ve made the “trending list” and begin to have spammers invade your hashtag, DO NOT PANIC! This means you are wildly successful!

Tip – Post about the fact that there are spammers, so your attendees don’t accidentally click on anything the spammers are sharing. 

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How to Run a Successful Multi-Platform Hashtag Campaign [VIDEOS]

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 #WantNewCarwith 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: #AllinforMurrayand #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.