Technology and innovation moves at a rapid pace. Keeping pace is a huge challenge.
Almost 10 years ago, the use of and the name Hashtag was first introduced to social media via Twitter. It's still baffling to some folks. Why do I need to use a Hashtag? What's the real purpose? Is it effective? Is it central to my social media strategy? These are some of the questions that are still being asked. The simply answer is yes, it's important, and yes, it should be integrated into your social media strategy.
The primary purpose, or use is to cobble together all of the similar conversations into a singley stream of communications. It creates an easy way to follow a conversation, interact with a conversation or search for a conversation or event.
As you can imagine, most folks and marketers are still playing catch-up. Recently, a set of standards were set-up to help guide the use of the Hashtag and ascertain effective results. Some of the standards included: How many Hashtags to include in a single post? How do you decide when to create a branded Hashtag?
There are a number of universal Hashtags that are already in play and just selecting a Hashtag and including it in your Tweets, messages or communications, can connect and expose your brand message to a wide audience. In essence, the Hashtag helps to increase your audience reach and relevance. It also helps in search results.
