Just a few short years ago, the ‘#’ symbol meant ‘number’ or ‘pound,’ depending on where you lived. In 2007, a suggestion was made to Twitter to use # to tag group conversations – Twitter initially rejected the idea saying, “These things are for nerds. They’re never going to catch on.”
Twitter quickly changed their minds, and the rest is history.
It’s important that retailers today understand how and where to use hashtags to their advantage. Extremely flexible, they can be used anywhere – from advertising to events to TV news. Hashtags can be integrated throughout your marketing mix – customers now widely understand what they mean. In addition, they help organize your online content and reinforce your brand position.
Retail brands that integrate hashtags into the marketing mix see major benefits. They leverage the power of the hashtag and work the social channels to their advantage. Those that continue to ignore the increasing power and reach of social media are in danger of losing customers to those that do.
Here are five ways that smart retailers can use hashtags as part of a powerful marketing mix:
Aggregate content from an event
Create a specific hashtag to be used during an event. Then use a third-party software platform to aggregate the content from different social channels and display it on your website. For example, Mercedes Fashion Week used #MBFW. They were then able to promote this special hashtag and collect a lot of valuable content. This strategy created further engagement with the event and promoted their sponsorship.
Create contests
Sometimes all your customers need is a small push to incentivize and get them engaged. A contest is a great way to gather content using a hashtag. Fight Club is currently doing this – running a contest promoting their sneakers. To enter, customers simply attach hashtag #fcsweeps to a photo of their sneakers. Fight Club is aiming for post-purchase engagement and meaningful connections with customers on social networks. It’s incentivized word of mouth marketing.
Leverage off an existing hashtag
If you are in the fashion industry, you may be familiar with the tag #OOTD, which stands for “Outfit of the Day.” If you used this same popular hashtag to tag your content, potential customers would see your content alongside their tagged selfies. The advantage is greater reach with a trending or known hashtag.
Monitor location-specific hashtags
Another clever way to use hashtags is to search for keywords plus hashtags that contain the location relevant to your retail business. You can identify all content taken at a particular place. This method is useful if your retail business targets a specific geographic region, allowing you to connect and engage directly with potential local customers. However, the disadvantage is there can tend to be a lot of irrelevant content, so be careful with this one.
Gather what’s already out there
An innovative way to use hashtag marketing is to aggregate and curate existing content. If you are lucky enough to have a brand that your customers naturally tag, you can use this user-generated content for your website. For example, Lulu Lemon promotes their self-created hashtag #thesweatlife, which has been used almost 50,000 times on Instagram. If you do this, just be careful to give the appropriate credit. Even better, seek permission to use it.
Paul Bingham is COO of Shuttlerock.