You can’t look at any online campaign these days without seeing a certain key element- The hashtag. Hashtags are everywhere, from personal Twitter Accounts to brand campaigns, you will find them anywhere, and they are a key ingredient to a successful Twitter Wall.
When designed well, hashtags can be a great tool for building up engagement before, during and after your event, while at the same time establishing an image for your brand. If it isn’t designed well, it probably won’t have any effect at all. So what makes a good hashtag? How can your business design a hashtag that works with your event?
Be Unique with your Twitter Wall Hashtag Choice
The idea of a hashtag is to raise awareness before and during your event, so it has to stand out. The more unique it is, the easier it is to take in with minimal exposure, thus making it easier for it to spread. You need to ensure that the hashtag you choose for your Twitter Wall isn’t too vague or common. For example, if you were holding a cat exhibition to celebrate your feline companion, #CatEvent won’t have enough value to be remembered. However, #MCRcatExpo (if it were based in Manchester of course), would be specific and memorable.
Timing for your Twitter Wall Hashtag is Important
This is especially important if this is the first event of what you hope will be many to come. If you want to get people using your hashtag for the Twitter Wall at the event, you need to build up the hype beforehand. From the moment you announce your event, you need to be promoting that hashtag at any possible moment, encouraging your audience to jump onto the bandwagon. When the big day finally hits, people are bound to be using the hashtag throughout.
Be Concise with your Twitter Wall Hashtag
Your Twitter Wall hashtag is only as strong as its usability. A generic and vague concept is far less likely to pick up as your audience won’t really know what to do with it. So, as we have mentioned, your hashtag needs to make sense in order to be easily understood. Make sure that the purpose of the tag is clear so that it’s not only you who uses the hashtag.
Think through all Implications
There have been a fair few cautionary tales from poorly designed hashtag campaigns. We needn’t go into too much detail, but sometimes you need to think about the wording of the hashtag before you post it out there for people to see. You don’t want your misreading of what should be a fairly innocent hashtag to come back and bite you, especially when it is going to be showcased on your Twitter Wall.
If you have chosen to recycle an existing hashtag, you may be able to be strategic about it, and make past conversations work in your favour. Tools such as hashtagify are available for you to check out existing associations with your hashtag, as well as a graph to demonstrate influential use of the hashtag.
Less is More
When you begin to see results, you may find yourself tempted to go overboard with the hashtag. However, despite social media is very well known for moving on at a fast pace, this is only true to a certain extent. Though you want to be getting people excited about your event, it’s better to encourage a response with your tweets as opposed to being the one doing all the talking. Ask questions to go with your hashtag, encourage others to use it to get themselves noticed. This can be done leading up to and during your event, meaning you will end up with even more talk on your Twitter Wall.
It is important that your hashtags are designed to stick in peoples minds, as they should become an important addition to the branding around your event, and remain an effective marketing tool for events and Twitter Wall engagement in the future.
If you would like to get your audience talking through the influence of a Twitter Wall at one of your events, then why not contact Social Sticker today to see how we can help? Our services cover a range of your event needs, and we are happy to sit and chat with any specific ideas you may have in mind.
