5 Ways Your Company Can Use Twitter Hashtags

If your company has a Twitter account, hashtags, better recognized as #,  should be a part of your social media strategy. Follow these five tips to improve your company’s hashtag strategy.

1. Look for Business-Specific Conversations

If you use Twitter for one thing, use it to learn from others. Look for hashtags such as #smallbiz or #socialmedia to find advice, resources, and influential people to follow. While using these hashtags to learn and gain advice is great, step into the conversation once and a while. Using a hashtag about a subject you’re interested in will put you in the conversation and will allow other people to engage with you too around that topic.

If you want to jump into a more specific conversation, narrow down the hashtag. For example, looking for a business savvy person to follow? Try #entrepreneurs. Wanting to meet new people? Try #networking.

2. Keep it Simple and Consistent 

When tweeting about a new blog post about creating and developing mobile apps, don’t do this: #MobileAppCreationandDevelopment. Try this: #mobileapp #development #design. Overwhelmingly long hashtags are hard to read, making your tweet buried in the mix, and also aren’t search-friendly.

3. Create Your Own Hashtag

Large and small companies can create their own hashtags, and they should! Hashtags are a great way to generate buzz around just about anything! For example, Domino’s Pizza told followers to tweet #letsdolunch. When the number of tweets reached 85,000, Domino’s split prices in half during lunch that day. Get creative! Hashtags are a fun way to engage with you followers and be more than just a Twitter account.

4. Organize Social Dashboards by Hashtag

Whether you use HootSuite or TweetDeck, using a social dashboard can conveniently keep you up-to-date with relevant hashtags for your company. You can create specific columns by social network, search term, or hashtag.

5. Take Advantage of Follow Friday

Micah Baldwin, CEO and Chief Community Caretaker of Graphic.ly, announced on Twitter that he would suggest people to follow every week. This trend took off with the hashtag #FollowFriday and has now been shortened to #FF.

You can use Follow Friday in two ways. You can create a list of great people to follow and try to fit as many of them as you can in a tweet using the hashtag #FF. You can also group your favorite followers in categories. For example, tweet #FF #entrepreneurs and then list the entrepreneurs you like following. This is a great way to contribute to the conversation while letting people know you like following them at the same time.

These are just 5 ways to use hashtags. What are some ways your company uses them?

Below is a current example of how our business used hashtags in the hiring process.

Tags: brand, hashtags, interactive media, marketing, Micah Baldwin, social media, social networking, Twitter