For every spot-on, “I wish I’d thought of that” hashtag on social media, there are countless others that miss their mark entirely.
So what makes one hashtag a runaway hit and another instantly forgotten? What qualities go into a great hashtag?
Let’s take a closer look at the 9 rules of thumb to successfully create a hashtag for your brand:
1. Push Past The Early Ideas
The first thing that’s important to mention is that you are going to have a lot of mediocre to bad ideas when you first start figuring out how to create a hashtag. Expect it, and prepare for it. There’s a reason there are so many “meh” hashtags out there: some frazzled social media manager or marketing director on a deadline published the first idea that came to mind.
But you’re going to move past this phase and get to the good stuff.
Give yourself room to get these lacklustre hashtag ideas out of your system. However you work best – whiteboard brainstorming, mind-mapping, old-fashioned doodling – write ‘em all down. Don’t censor yourself in this phase, even if you’re embarrassed by some of your half-baked ideas.
Start with the obvious words associated with your brand, your products, your industry. Look at your competitors and see what they’re doing. Play with word and phrase combinations, then take a break if you can. Go marinate on the ideas you’ve come up with, then come back with fresh eyes later.
2. Define Your Intention
What is it that you want your customers to do with this hashtag?
Will they be taking selfies wearing the sunglasses from your new collection? Will they be posting pictures of the recipes they made with your baking equipment? Put yourself in your customers’ shoes, and focus on creating a hashtag that you can actually see them using.
Separate themes into different categories, and pay attention to the ones that catch your attention. Look at them as building blocks, and see how you can tweak and combine them for improvements.
For a very broad hashtag that could belong to any brand, how could you make it more tailored to your company or customers? For a hard-to-get hashtag, how could you open it up to make it more understandable?
Remember which characters are allowed in a hashtag as well: letters and numbers are fine, but punctuation marks (commas, periods, exclamation points) and special characters (asterisks, ampersands, dollar signs) are not.
3. Keep Your Audience In Mind
The whole point of your hashtag building mission is to earn the attention and engagement of your customers. Keep them central to your efforts.
What do you already know about them? What do they like and dislike? What do they already talk and post about on social media? How do you think they will react to each hashtag you’re considering?
A hashtag has to be relevant to your community, or it will be met with confusion, annoyance or disdain. Show that you get them.
4. Aim For Short And Sweet
There are exceptions, but most effective hashtags are concise and easy to understand at a glance.
Clarity is key. You won’t have time to explain a convoluted hashtag – your audience will have already moved on by then. Don’t be so focused on cleverness or creativity that you confuse people.
Play with a short phrase or just a few words. If you have a concept you love that’s too wordy, look for other ways to express it. Pare down that vocabulary, and get lean.
5. Toy With Their Emotions
Simplicity is important in creating a hashtag, but that doesn’t mean you can’t explore more complex emotions and experiences. A hashtag that evokes a strong reaction or feeling in your audience is memorable and powerful – even if it doesn’t explicitly mention your company name at all.
6. Research Your Short List
Narrow down your favourite hashtag ideas, and put together a short list of contenders. Once you have a solid selection, take time to research them thoroughly on social media. You’re looking for a hashtag that’s strongly associated with your brand, that you can track and monitor. For that to work, you want a hashtag you can own.
Are individuals or brands already using your ideas on any platform? If so, were they one-off posts or associated with a campaign?
The last thing you want is to unwittingly co-opt an existing hashtag – especially one that has nothing to do with your brand. This can be frustrating at best, or a PR disaster at worst.
7. Look For Potential Problems
This is another crucial step you can’t afford to skip. Examine your hashtag closely for any possible problems. Write it out in all lowercase characters. Read it out loud. Ask other people on your team to do the same. Note where you stumble or have to do a double take. Ask different people to write the hashtag when you dictate it to them (without them seeing it written down). Does anyone struggle with its spelling, pronunciation or meaning?
This is also a time when it pays to be completely immature. Give yourself permission to put your mind in the gutter. Look at your hashtag from the perspective of a 13-year-old or the most sarcastic person on social media. Is there any way it could be misinterpreted or read differently than you intend? Is there any innuendo or association hidden in that hashtag that will come back to haunt you later?
8. Run It By A Wider Audience
Before you open your hashtag up to the public, run it by a few key people outside your team first. Do a gut check with people who are representative of your target audience – especially across languages, cultures, age groups or other important demographics.
Do they get it? What does it mean to them? Can they see themselves remembering and using it?
Once you have their buy-in, you can move forward with more confidence.
9. Promote It Like Crazy
Congratulations! You’ve mastered the art of hashtag building, and you’re ready to release your creation out into the world.