Choosing the right hashtag for your campaign can be tricky[/caption] Not enough businesses choose a hashtag to market their businesses these days. Those that do are faced with a challenge. They need to make sure when choosing a hashtag that they choose one that fits their campaign, that is memorable and one that will resonate with the audience. If you’re one of these businesses and you’re wondering what hashtag you should use, here are six tips. 1. Keep it as short as possible This is easier said than done but, if it’s possible, keep the hashtag as short as possible. Since the most amount of characters a Twitter handle (username) can have is 16, try and keep the hashtag to the same amount of characters. 2. Make our hashtag relevant If you worked at Adidas and were working on a campaign to introduce a new type of trainer called the Traction, you could use something like #AddTraction. If the hashtag was being used for nothing other than filing purposes, this wouldn’t be that bad a choice. But if you wanted to get brand awareness too, the hashtag would look more like something to do with mathematics than a running shoe. Instead #AdidasTraction is the better choice as both the brand and the product is being showcased. 3. Make sure nobody else is using it Tracking stats is key to knowing whether a hashtag is making an impact or not. You need to know how many impressions it’s getting, how many tweets it’s being used in, how many people are using it and more. To make sure you can attribute all these statistics to your campaign, you need to make sure nobody else is using it. This is the only way to ensure the figures you’re seeing are exclusively caused by your campaign. 4. Decide if is for just one campaign or an on-going one Earlier this year Airbnb ran a contest via Instagram where you could win a trip by making a 15-second video and tagging it with the #Airbnbshorts hashtag. This is perfect for that campaign, but once the contest finished the hashtag became redundant (until the next possible contest). There’s nothing wrong with this hashtag as it served a purpose, but it does have a shelf life. When choosing your hashtag decide if you’re going to be using it for just one campaign or on ongoing one. 5. If you can, make it conversational This doesn’t always have to be the case, but it’s good to keep hashtags conversational if you can. This way they fit into sentences published on social media better. For instance, when I worked with travel bloggers at Hostelworld, I created the hashtag #WithHostelworld which was exclusively for them. Not only was this unique for the on-going campaign of collaborating with travel bloggers, but it fit well into tweets also. 6. Keep the hashtags to a minimum The other day I saw a business on social media use five separate hashtags in as many days. Imagine the reporting that would go into that? Also, how could any of these really resonate with the audience as there were so many of them? Instead, brands should keep hashtags they’re using in their social media to a minimum. It will increase the potential for virality, while making a marketer’s job easier at the same time. What’s your top tip for choosing a hashtag for a social media campaign? ]]>