Twitter hashtags are one the crucial and omnipresent thing used in social media platforms nowadays. These had their humble beginnings from Twitter, but have now become quite trending. People, these days even talk using these hashtags. Every tweet, every post in the current scenario, contains hashtags in it. Hashtags render people more active in social media. These hashtags, may, at times, result in providing the required engagements, but not at all the times.
By using Hashtags, you can organise everything in social media. You will also get an opportunity to know who is talking about similar things as the ones you are talking about. A person should know: when to use hashtags, where to use hashtags, and also the hashtags one should use? Most importantly, how will these hashtags help you leverage your brand and company in the social media.
What are Hashtags?
On Social media, mainly Twitter, when you use “#” and continue writing the words without any spaces, then the phrase is a “hashtag”. When we write a hashtag for a tweet, it gets linked to all the other people who use the same hashtag. One more advantage is that these hashtags also increase the visibility in the masses. It can even increase the conversation to last for a longer period of time.
When you add “#” with any phrase, then the resultant hashtag will act as a link. Whenever someone clicks the hashtag, that person is redirected to the place or people who use the same hashtag. You can see and know the range or people who use the hashtag.
Hashtags are tags that anyone can create. In fact, anyone can use these, but one can’t restrict people from using them. Sometimes, the hashtags can trend organically without including any popular brand. Hashtags grab people’s attention and encourage them to read the content. In this way, you can increase the engagements and viewers for your page in Social media.
Keeping all these things aside one more crucial thing that comes up on everyone’s mind is:
Would I be able to enroll my hashtag?
The answer to this is “YES”. Anyone who has created his/her hashtag can enroll it. The only thing they can’t stop people from using it, unless the hashtag is promoting a brand.
It clearly means, you can register a hashtag as yours but you can’t own it as you do in case of websites created by you.
Why should we use Hashtags?
Hashtags usually ease the process and make your brand visible to the audience. When people search for the hashtag, each and every post which contains the hashtag will pop up all the results. Using the hashtags, you can reach the audience who are the target customers for your business. This makes things easy for you, because people themselves will search for your business, using the hashtags and will find you. Hashtags are also used to create an action because people use it and automatically get attracted towards it.
If your hashtag is relevant enough, then people will be automatically get enticed and spend more time on your social media page. After some time, you can redirect them to your official website. In this way, you can increase the number of engagements. Hashtags are also used by various social media platforms except Twitter. This somehow affects the use of hashtags in social media. It also impacts the use of Hashtags as the amount of information given increases and puts everything on the front page, while you search in the social media.
The Hashtags created give only the distinctive results. For people, who are active in social media, it becomes easy to find all the information for the users in the social media platform. If a hashtag is unique and you combine it with the content, then it makes the whole content unique and makes your post stand out amongst the social media users. The users can also find it useful and valuable and will also copy your hashtag.
How to use Hashtags on Twitter?
The series of hashtags started from Twitter only. Hashtagging has a major impact on your Twitter account, when you start considering the follower count. Using the general and non-specific hashtags doesn’t drive the required traffic. If you use some of the hashtags which are trending and most of the people are using it, then such hashtags will attract a lot of people. Below are a few similar kinds of hashtags:
Hashtagging in twitter encourages people to take part in various activities taking place in the social media platform. Always make sure that all the hashtags that you create and the tweets you tweet in the twitter aim at grabbing more audience, or you can say, followers. This is useful, even if people don’t follow you.
If you have a good content with unique and grabbing hashtags, people will automatically start engaging in your posts. From the next time, people will automatically consider you to be effective and your work to be amazing and they will start following you.
Below, we mention some of the hashtags and the twitter campaigns that we created and the hashtags that we registered. By using these hashtags, people following us increased a lot.
How to do Campaign in Twitter using effective Hashtags?
For any digital marketing company or organisations who are selling their products on the digital platform:
All those companies for whom the digital platform is a business, have to make their presence felt on the online platform. Grabbing the attention of the people is the main motto of any company. The audience, most of the time, gather in social networking because many people stay active on the social media platform and people communicate with each other here. Social media has become a part and parcel of everyone’s everyday life these days.
Coming to the Twitter, it is one if such platform where people are always active. There are a lot of biggies, companies, celebrities, social activists who use this platform, almost incessantly. Most of the people all over the world follow these people. Not only the people, but celebrities are also interested in various activities that go on in the social media platform.
To promote your brand amidst all these is a major challenge and grabbing the attention of the people becomes a bit difficult. To overcome this challenge, companies do campaigns on different occasions. Being a digital marketing agency, we also embarked on digital campaigns. Having a sound knowledge of Twitter and its use, we too started campaigning.
CAMPAIGNS
Independence Day
Our first campaign on Twitter was the Independence day campaign, in which we made a video about giving up plastic flags and use flags made of fabric or paper. Indirectly, we were requesting our viewers to stop using plastic and turn to use biodegradable materials. This was to highlight the adverse effects of our addiction to plastic, resulting in pollution and killing of land animals and marine mammals, the resultant plastic pollution and the interminable loss to the environment.
This was our very first campaign in Twitter. A maiden attempt by us, we just used trending and relevant hashtags. We didn’t use or make our own hashtag. Our main motto was to reach the masses by hook or by crook, and create awareness. It truly was a boon in disguise, and proved a boost for using social media as a viable platform for sharing our ideas.
Post this, we started amassing knowledge about Twitter and started learning different ways of doing marketing on Twitter.
Raksha Bandhan
Our second campaign was on Raksha Bandhan, a festival signifying the bond between a brother and a sister. The festival is characterised by the sister tying a Rakhi or the sacred thread on her brother’s wrist. The brother then takes a vow to protect her lifelong. On this day, we planned a campaign and made a contest with hashtag #IamwithYouSister. The campaign ran like this – the brother and sister had to take a selfie, with the rakhi tied on the brother’s wrist. People had to take the picture and use the hashtags #IamwithYouSister and #RakhiAtSoftscripts. Gift vouchers were given away to randomly selected participants.
The outreach of this campaign was moderate. Here also, we neither created our own hashtags, nor used or framed our own hashtags. The response was not very encouraging.
Our learnings:
It is not necessary that every campaign will grab the audience’s attention. Some campaigns might be a huge success and grab a lot of response, and yet a few might not be upto the expected level. This is a fact that must be accepted with grace. We should never give up and stop, but should move on.
Ganesh Chaturthi
Ganesh Chaturthi or Ganapati Puja, as it is more popularly known, is one of India’s famous festivals, celebrating the birth of Lord Ganesha – the elephant-headed God. Every house is adorned with Ganesha idols made of different materials – Tumeric, mud, or the idols made from metal. We collaborated with another company that produced eco-friendly idols of Lord Ganesha, which could easily dissolve, and started our campaign.
We shot a 30 second video that displayed the idea of stopping usage of Idols made up of POP or Plaster of Paris. Instead, it showcased the usage of Green Ganesha or biodegradable idols. For this video, we received 1,146 organic views and the people not only viewed the video but gave positive response and engaged themselves actively. Hence, we need to upload good and relevant content such that viewers can be easily attracted.
Collaborating and doing campaigns also saves a lot of time. This is always a win-win situation, you can increase the number of users by attracting and retaining your own viewers, and also by gain the users of the collaborated company.
MORE ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN
On the same occasion, we also ran another campaign – selfie with eco-friendly Ganesha. That was when we started using our own hashtag, that is #SelfiewithEcoGanesha. People participated enthusiastically and came up with their unique selfies with biodegradable and environment-friendly idols of Lord Ganesha and posted them, using the #SelfiewithEcoGanesha. It was mandatory to have the selfies only with Eco-friendly Ganesha. Selfies with other forms of idols were not considered. The top 5 contestants were awarded gift vouchers.
The campaign was live on all the 10 days of Ganesh Chaturthi and a lot of people participated with their amazing selfies. They also came up with different ideas on celebrating the eco-friendly Ganesh Chaturthi. The response was overwhelming and we had, by this time, gathered a group of loyal followers and people who follow us regularly. They are still with us!
World Tourism Day
We not only concentrated on the local or national events. In fact, we tried to cover almost everything that was going on in the whole world. We mostly concentrated our campaigns on trending topics. For instance, we conducted a campaign on World Tourism Day too. However, here also, we didn’t create any hashtag of ours. Yet the campaign was successful with a huge crowd of people who visited the campaign. The people who had participated in our earlier campaigns, now became our trusted audience. The campaign was all about sharing their travel pictures.
In this campaign, we gathered a decent number of comments and retweets, where people posted their travel pictures in India with the hashtag #WorldTourismDay.
Our motto was not only to promote our brand. We had the vision of promoting our brand along with the concept of improving the Indian Tourism on a worldwide spectrum. Our efforts bore fruit and we landed up getting thousands of lovely pictures with nature at the backdrop.
Indonesia
We did not restrict our campaigns exclusively to promotion of our brand, instead, we also focussed on the current scenario and the present world conditions. For example, we created awareness, empathy and sympathy in the minds and hearts of people when Tsunami struck Indonesia. This was for a social cause and with the noble idea of helping people in distress.
Gandhi Jayanti
Considered to be a national festival in India, Gandhi Jayanti is celebrated to mark the birth of the father of our nation – Mahatma Gandhi – our great leader who freed India from the shackles of British supremacy. We created a campaign to accomplish his vision of keeping India clean and green. We also supported the Honourable Prime Minister’s vision of #SwacchBharat. Here, we created a Hashtag #WeSupportBapusdream. In the campaign, people had to post their images supporting the #SwaachBharat campaign and how they are contributing their bit in keeping the country clean.
The top participants got away with alluring Gift Coupons, sponsored by us.
Most of our campaigns are aimed towards social causes and also make people aware of the present day scenario in our country.
Indian Air Force Day
We created a campaign on the Indian Air Force Day to support our Sky Warriors and make people realise the fact that it is because of them we are safe and sound inside the comfort of our home and have a happy sleep. After this, we asked people to write 2-3 lines about these real heroes whom they know. We created our own hashtag #HumVayuSenakeSaath, which means “we are with the air force” We also promised to give Gift hampers at the end of the campaign. A huge number of people participated in it, and came up with a lot many stories – told and untold of these real heroes.
Dusshera
This was our latest campaign which ended with the culmination of Dussehra – a 10-day long festival or Navratri, where people worship Goddess Durga. The festival signifies the victory of good over evil. Our idea was to support women and the concept of women empowerment. We created a hashtag #HumNaarikeSaath which means “We support women”.
In this campaign, we encouraged people to tag their friends and family, whomever they wanted to gift this festive season. For this, they had to use the hashtag #UtsavKaMausam which was created by us. At the end of the festival, some randomly chosen participants were given Gift Coupons.
KEY THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND
- Always giveaway the prizes and gifts which were promised in the campaign. Never ever try to bluff people, because if you do so, people will not only feel cheated but would lose their trust in you and eventually leave. Your campaigns will be considered fake and you will lose your integrity.
- Conduct the campaigns according to your budget and limit yourself till the point your budget permits you. It will only be stupidity if you promise something and struggle hard to fulfil it.
- Have some guidelines for each and every campaign. Ask the contestants to follow the guidelines and make everything fair for the audience. This will reduce your stress levels, while selecting the deserving persons as winners of the campaigns.
These are some of the things that, if meticulously followed, will yield good results and positive outcomes, in the twitter campaigns.
This article throws light on how hashtags help promote twitter campaigns.
Hope this gives you a good idea about campaigning on social media.
