Definition: The # symbol (placed before a word such as #socialmedia), called a Hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages. Determining how you want to use this feature (more information found within your social media strategy) will determine how successful your campaign will be, so make sure to plan how and why.
14 recommendations for using hashtags for ethical business and non-profits:
1. For offline events. Participate in other others’ event streams particular to your industry. Whether your focus is recycling or corporate philanthropy, ensure your company representatives are participating online. Twitter is an ideal place to represent.
2. Recommend others. To recommend others with the #EcoMonday or #FollowFriday (also #ff). Alternatively, if you are adventurous, create your own recommendation hashtag.
3. Use popular hashtags. To enable users to find out about your tweets, you can use #green #socent #susty and others. Find out about how popular tweets are by searching http://hashtags.org.
4. Create your own. Then make your hashtag popular. Publicize it; especially if you’re trying to gather a Twitter stream for a particular campaign or event, put it on promotional material such as posters, name badges or otherwise.
5. Be topic-relevant. Use hashtags only on tweets relevant to the topic. Not a good idea to falsely advertise, so don't add a hasthag to a non-relevant topic.
6. Not too many. Don’t #spam with #hashtags. Don’t over-tag a single tweet. Twitter best practices say you should keep your hashtags to under 3 #hashtags per tweet.
7. On your website. Have a specific campaign or chat happening using a particular Hashtag? Make sure to include a Twitter widget that publicizes it to get even more interactions.
8. Categorize blog posts. Looking to promote your blog posts? When tweeting about your post, ensure it has popular hasthags to be found easily by those searching.
9. Join conversations. If you are going to be tweeting about a trending topic (that might be off-topic within your organization) make sure you add your voice to the conversation just in case readers would like to follow you.
For example: If you’re a sustainability expert interested in the royal wedding in the UK, add a #royalwedding and #green hashtag to ask about how sustainable are royal weddings?
10. Create conversations. Like #agchat, #journchat or #csrchat, creating a topic-focused conversation around your industry makes your business or not-for-profit a leader. Make sure you publicize and promote your event so there's interaction, and always get the biggest industry players on Twitter to join in.
11. For categorization. Add hashtags to your tweets so others will be able to find your tweets.
Sample tweet: Are you a social entrepreneur? Check out @Ashoka's definition http://bit.ly/lChjN5 #socent via @ericagrigg
12. For funnies. Or not. The over-the-top hashtags that last forever can be annoying. As written about in the New Yorker, long hashtags can be hilarious at times, but they get old quick.
13. Quantify! Make sure to determine how many people are using the hashtags you've created. You can determine where the peaks and ebbs are on your http://hashtags.org graph.
14. Promote & Publicize. Again, once you've determined how many hashtags, it's also important to determine the quality of conversations. Importantly, you can ReTweet others additions, but you can also publish a blog post on what happened. Even better--get another organization in the space to recommend and write about what happened during your Twitter conversation.
Sample tweet: Just got done with a rib eye sandwich this #MeatlessMonday #JustKidding
Contributor: Erica Grigg is Partner and Director of Marketing and Digital Marketing at Carbon Outreach. Erica has trained hundreds of social enterprises, not-for-profits and corporate social responsibility executives on social media tools including Twitter. Erica recently co-authored, "Facebook for Social Enterprise" in June 2011. Erica speaks internationally on responsible business and marketing issues, and blogs for Treehugger.
