CONNECTING THROUGH HASHTAGS
Soraya Jackson
October 30, 2022
In an interview with Jael Joesph (my professor), Angela McLean talks about how as a brand, you should be talking with your audience, not at your audience.
Today, building a relationship with your audience means your interactions should be natural and not forced. Promotional content should be causal, not insincere. Twitter (or any microblogging medium) is one of the few perfect mediums where this can happen.
“People, at the end of the day, just want to be seen.”
— Angela McLean
Look at it this way:
My mom loves the TLC show 90 Day Fiance, and she’ll often live-tweet her thoughts to her 1,992 followers, but her tweets barely get interactions other than the few likes she gets from using the dedicated hashtag.
But she gets so excited when TLC or the 90 Days Fiance Twitter page interacts (likes, retweets or comments) with her posts.
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That natural interaction and very simple graze of acknowledgement makes her feel seen as a fan.
Therefore, she’ll continue to live tweet and build a special relationship with the show through her interactions, even though the page’s social media manager was probably on a liking spree using the brand’s dedicated hashtag.
Sorry.
But you know what? Maybe, my mom’s tweet was hilarious and consisted of valuable input.
Both TLC and The 90 Day Fiance accounts are aware of their fanbase. So they created a dedicated hashtag to find all brand-related tweets in one spot, including my mom’s cast theories.
Dedicated hashtags let fans connect with other fans, and brands can connect with fans too.
For 90 Day Fiancé, the hashtag is super simple #90DayFiance.
But there are also campaign-specific hashtags that many brands may use.
Like:
Coca-Cola has #ShareACoke;
Charmin Toilet Paper has #TweetFromTheSeat
And sometimes, the hashtag might be changed or shortened depending on the phrase’s length or if the expected hashtag is for something else.
Like:
Ontario Politics = #OnPoli
How I Met Your Mother/Father (The TV Series) = #HIMYM // #HIMYF
Get Ready with Me // Outfit of the Day = #GRWM // #OOTD
At first glance, hashtags may seem like extra work. But they also hold lots of value.
It’s the same thing as colour-coding your notes in school. Except we are organizing the whole internet.
