A hashtag can be detrimental in the wrong hands. Thanks to the rise of social media, particularly Twitter, the hashtag has become an important linguistic shortcut.
Hashtags connect your content with other people talking about the same thing or looking for information about something. This can potentially extend your brand content past your own audience.
Unfortunately like with all good things, hashtags are been rapidly hackneyed and demolished by social media “specialist” who don’t understand how to properly use them. Not just that but they are actually hurting their own brands.
A recent study from Socialbakers showed that “posts that use one or two hashtags see more interactions per post (593) than those that incorporate more hashtags. Use 10 or more hashtags in a single post, and that number drops to 188 interactions.”
Eric Enge (CEO at Stone Temple Consulting Corporation) twitted last year: “Using more than 2 hashtags can decrease engagement more than 17%”
The Internet may not have strictly defined rules, but we should at least try to show some manners and etiquette. Have a look at The Ritz-Carlton – what a mess….
Hashtag Rules by www.howtohashtag.com
1: DON’T OVERUSE – use a maximum of two hashtags in your tweets or Facebook posts. If you use too many your followers will think you are spamming them.
2: KEEP THEM SHORT — tweets are restricted to 140 characters you don’t want a hashtag taking up 50% of the letters in your tweet, there is however no limit to Facebook post length but keep them short to avoid annoying your fans/friends.
3: DEFINE YOUR TAG – in a tag directory such as http://tagdef.com, give your tag a meaning you can also search for the meaning of existing tags.
4: NO SPACES OR PUNCTUATION – make sure there are no spaces in the words preceding the hashtag or punctuation, as it will break the link.
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