Think before you hashtag
- Tue 16th Nov 2010, Rachel
I’m very conscious that there are no hard and fast rules for social media, and often what’s considered good and bad varies depending on whose opinion you ask. Sometimes, what might be right in one situation, isn’t in another. Life’s just like that – hardly anything is black or white, but mostly the shades of grey in between.
The best answer is always to think before you do. It’s just another one of those things that sounds so obvious that I wonder why I’m saying it, and you might be wondering that too, but there’s a surprising amount of evidence around, across all industries and sectors, that proves thinking is more rare than most people would care to admit.
One place I regularly see lack of quality thought is in the use of hashtags on Twitter (for anyone who’s not come across them, they’re the live linked words in tweets with the ‘#’ symbol at the front). ‘They’re just a small detail’, you might say, but I know that small details add up to big wins, so they’re worth getting right. They’re also worth getting right because, with social media, when things go wrong, it can be a bit embarrassing or, at worst, even turn into a PR nightmare.
I see examples of ‘when hashtags go wrong’ all the time. They’re mostly people using them ineffectually, but fairly innocuously – hashtagging your own charity’s name in a tweet was one example I saw recently, which isn’t going to upset anyone, but is pretty pointless (your charity name is usually your profile name, so will appear in your tweets automatically).
So, when should you use a hashtag?
Well, like I say, there are no hard and fast rules, but in my view, the point of creating and/or using a hashtag is:
- To draw attention to something that you want to create a buzz about – like a new campaign
- To encourage people to retweet your original message
- To aggregate content around that thing – so people can access the stream of others using that hashtag and so you can pull the stream into a widget, another Twitter profile, your blog, a website etc.
- To add a message to an existing hashtag stream, or widely discussed topic, where it’s relevant and the people using the other hashtag/discussing that topic might genuinely be interested in the message
It’s on that last point that the Conservatives dropped a bit of a clanger on Remembrance Sunday. I didn’t spot it but came across via this post entitled, ‘As we Remember; one charity sticks up for its independence’:
Linking your idea as a hashtag – in this case #BigSociety – into an existing, popular subject, so it’s seen by more people, probably seems, on the face of it, to be quite clever. But if it’s not relevant, it just looks a bit cheeky and, if the subject is something as sensitive and emotionally loaded as Remembrance Sunday, you can see how it could be perceived badly. Rob’s post shows the reaction from @PoppySupport, as well linking to another Twitter user who took umbrage at @Conservatives’ opportunism:
I call this ‘jumping the stream’ – insinuating yourself into a hashtagged stream that doesn’t really have much to do with you, when it’s clear to others that you’re doing it to promote yourself or your own message. It’s a bit like charging into a party and trying to get everyone there to leave and come to your party instead – not a great way to win friends or respect.
Rachel
-
Categories:
- blog
