As
CEOs and CMOs, you are definitely familiar with those little hashtags that
appears everywhere, some of which might be #yourcompany. As a graduate student
in Northwestern University Medill School’s Integrated Marketing CommunicationsProgram, I have put my emphasis on leveraging social media to boost brands and
have found two articles that are of interest to CEOs and CMOs who are willing
to better understand the powerful hashtags for their brands.
In
his article How to Use Hashtags to Increase Your Social Media Presence, Warren Knight
indicated that hashtags, when being used strategically, can create huge
popularity around your brand. Tweets with hashtags could double engagement
rate. You could use hashtags at various occasions like sales promotions,
special offers or educate others of your brand, but you have to make the
hashtags you use concise and unique. Furthermore, you should also measure some
KPIs (e.g. number of reposts, number of replies, link click etc.) in order to
see whether your hashtag strategy works and if not, you should make adjustment
accordingly.
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| Source: gregbeazley.com |
In
another article written by Warren Knight, 8 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid in 2014, he specified 8
mistakes to avoid, all of which could be applied to hashtag usage and
eventually could be broken down into the following three points: First, don’t
use hashtags to build your brand without a strategy. You should first know
social media well and then build a strategy specifically for hashtags. Second, don’t
blindly create social media presence on every possible social media platforms.
Figure out where your customers aggregate and use hashtags to engage them where
they are. Third, don’t use too much hashtags in one tweet. Confusing your
customers is the least thing you want to do.
After
reviewing these 2 articles, here are 3 actions CEOs and
CMOs should consider taking:
l Monitor
Social:
Do consumer research and social monitoring, know where they are and what they
are talking about.
l Define
Social Strategy:
Develop social media strategy as well as hashtag strategy and act accordingly.
l Track
KPIs:
Constantly keep tracking your KPIs and make necessary adjustment.
Those
three actions should be done in a sequential way and should form a loop. Though
as CEOs and CMOs, you don’t have to change your strategy constantly, some minor
update resulting from changes in consumer behaviors should be reflected in the
strategy. If all three actions could be followed in a sequential way, hashtags
will be at your service and create huge returns based on little investment.
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