This is an archived blog from when I ran Conscious Public Relations Inc. from 2008-2018. Excuse the potential outdated-ness!
My previous Coordinator did a great post on how to use hashtags. I wanted to talk about when to use them.
In a traditional media campaign we did, I thought that using a hashtag as part of an event would be a good idea so that we could track how many people were talking about it. But, if you don’t “release” the hashtag early on, people won’t know to use it.
Here are my lessons about using hashtags:
1. Use them early. We got some good engagement on Twitter prior to the event. I was only starting to use the hashtag the week of the event, and it resulted in a bunch of tweets and retweets, but it would have been nice to use it at the very start of the campaign so we could track the engagement, even if I was not responsible for the client’s Twitter account.
2. Display it prominently at the event. This particular campaign event had people looking at a piece of art. The sign that I had made displaying the hashtag was nowhere to be seen if people were not looking in that direction. So make sure that the hashtag and Twitter or Instagram accounts are displayed prominently where people are going to see it and use it.
3. Keep using it in other areas. If we had put it up on the website, other social media accounts, and hard marketing materials like flyers, we might have gotten more engagement with it as well. Talk about your hashtags as if it’s as important as the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of an event.
Good luck with your future campaign hashtags!
