The What, Who, How and Why of Hashtags

The days of “Spot the Hashtag” like “I-Spy” or “Where’s Waldo” are over. Hashtags practically make up the online marketing world—and we love it! Here is everything you need to know concerning the what, who, how, and why of hashtags.

#What

A hashtag is a symbol used to create a link to a word or phrase. If you need examples of hashtags, just watch Jimmy Fallon videos. Specifically his skit with Justin Timberlake—we were “lol-ing” pretty hard.

#Who

Who can use hashtags? You! Your daughter, sister, brother, uncle, dog, weird cousin, Starbucks barista, your boss—anyone! Hashtags aren’t some symbol that one group has a monopoly on, which is why you see them everywhere. Hashtags are easy to use, and simple to understand.

#How

Have you ever tried rocket science? Well, hashtagging is way easier. When you want to set a link to a certain word, put the pound sign in front of that word. Like this: # + word= #word. Now, if someone wanted to look up posts that tag “word”, they can search it and your post may come up. Using hashtags that are currently trending is the best way to have your post and profile seen. On Twitter, you can check popular tags by looking at the trends section.

Something to remember is that posts that overuse hashtags lose people’s interest. Try to keep your tags to a maximum of two per post. Keep it simple. Besides not overusing hashtags, don’t make your hashtags too long—especially because there are no spaces between words and you don’t want to make them #TooHardToRead.

#Why

Now that you know what hashtags are, and who and how to use them, it may benefit you to know why you’d want to. Hashtags are primarily used to filter information and create niche audiences. Social platforms have a search bar to find certain hashtags, which helps filter information. This feature is part of what makes hashtags beneficial, especially for marketing campaigns.

When starting a campaign, it is typical for a brand or company to create a hashtag that is original to their market and use it to see how people interact with their campaign. For our National Anthem auditions, we are using the hashtag, #NortonNationalAnthem. By having a personalized hashtag, we can see if anyone used our tag in their own posts and we can determine our campaign audience by analyzing who uses our tag.

Hashtags can increase your market audience and your following. If someone searches your hashtag and sees your post, they might decide to follow you. This can broaden our market as well as your following.

Now that you’ve been introduced to the ways of hashtagging, it’s time to try it yourself! Create an exquisite campaign tag, tweet to Jimmy Fallon, and give our tag a try with #TeamNortonNational. You’ll be a hashtag marketing master in no time!