Nowadays, hashtags are practically ubiquitous.
From Twitter to Instagram to Facebook and obviously anywhere in-between, hashtags are now commonly used to make it easier to gather information on a particular topic.
The aim of hashtags is to link user conversations together so that people who are not related or friends can take part in the same conversation.
However, it’s not just where hashtags are used that reflect evolution. The way they are used has also changed and developed.
Hashtags are also used by both small and large businesses to build targeted hashtag campaigns.
Hashtag campaigns are introduced by constructing a new hashtag for an express marketing intent. Unlike average hashtags, hashtags or hashtag participating in the hashtag movement do not happen by mistake.
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WHY DO BUSINESSES USE HASHTAG CAMPAIGNS?
Hashtag campaigns are most commonly used by businesses to attract social media exposure to their own goods and services, or to products and services in their industry or similar fields.
It’s all about importance and publicity. Hashtag campaigns are a social media tool used by businesses to monitor interactions and, in many cases, to offer information to their fans and clients.
Hashtag promotions are featured across blogs, websites, images, social media platforms and more, and are designed to improve consumer interaction with the end goal of creating brand recognition and growing sales.
Brands also launch hashtag campaigns explicitly to promote new goods, popularize existing ones, and/or disseminate content. Occasionally, these campaigns are often part of a competition or a reward.
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EXAMPLES OF SUCCESSFUL HASHTAG CAMPAIGNS
1. Camp Brand Goods
Camp Brand Goods wanted to create community involvement among their fellow outdoor enthusiasts. As an outdoor lifestyle brand, the company set out to create a hashtag campaign that would reinforce their picture of what they are about namely, the high importance they put on hiking, fishing, road trips, and the great outdoors.
As such, the #keepitwild hashtag was introduced by Camp Brand Products. Throughout the campaign, the company urged its Instagram followers to share pictures of themselves “keeping it wild” (hiking, fishing, etc.) to their personal Instagram accounts. In the meantime, their audience had to use the #keepitwild hashtag in the caption.
Camp Brand Goods awarded a t-shirt every week to a lucky Instagram user who used their hashtag. As a result, the hashtag was widely used, much to their delight.
2. Contractors
As an example, if you are a plumber, you might launch your own branded hashtag campaign on Tips. Holding a quick tip of 140 characters on Twitter, make sure your tip is short and sweet. Something we can all appreciate in today’s abundance of details. A link to your YouTube channel that gives a better explanation will help you take this further.
3. Wedding Wire
Wedding Wire is positioned as a wedding marketplace. Similar to Camp Brand Products, they also held a photo contest using their own custom hashtag: #WWChallenge. The contest ran over the weekend and invited users to upload wedding selfies that both tagged the company’s Instagram account explicitly and incorporated the #WWChallenge hashtag. The winner was given mild fame via a feature on the business account.
4. SmartBear
In 2014, Tech company SmartBear took an extra innovative step forward with its hashtag campaign. Targeted by showing off their powerful testing and development tools, SmartBear created an actual game, “Where’s Dain”—a sleek take on “Where’s Waldo.” Dain, a SmartBear maker, was trapped in secret areas all over SmartBear.com, and users had to find it.
Once found and clicked, Dain spawned a Twitter box that encouraged visitors to win a t-shirt by simply tweeting a message from the site. The message had to include the company’s account (@SmartBear) and their custom hashtag. Traffic rose by more than 120 percent, and “@SmartBear” mentions doubled during and after the hashtag campaign.
Conclusion
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