Facebook Joins Hashtag Mania
It seems that everywhere you look, whether it’s on television, a print ad in a magazine, or while browsing the web on your mobile device, avoiding the ever-present hashtag is a near impossibility. Back in March, EVG’s Jeanne Petrizzo wrote a blog about rumors that Facebook would soon announce the social media giant’s addition of hashtags to its platform. I’m here today to tell you that the rumor is now a reality.
So why should you care? Good question. If your company’s social media marketing objectives are to sit dormant and fall behind the competition, then you shouldn’t care. But if you are more into being heard, generating brand awareness, creating value for your loyal customer base, improving customer service efficiency, or any of the other social media benefits that businesses enjoy, then you should care because a simple hashtag could be the difference between your company joining the conversation or simply posting another post that no one reads.
There are over one billion Facebook users. That’s double the amount on Twitter, and it dwarves the 100 million on LinkedIn. Those one billion users are becoming increasingly savvy in their search capabilities, so in turn, it is becoming crucial to keep up with the changing face of Facebook.
Read up on Facebook’s Graph Search. Pinpoint critical keywords with Hashtags in your upcoming posts. Learn this! Research that! Running a successful social media campaign can sometimes cause headaches with the increasing frequency of updates that networks are making as they compete to be king of the social hill. But it is important to fight through those headaches and keep up with the latest news, or risk falling behind.
Ever wonder what all of the words with the little # symbol mean that pop up on your TV? Until now, they were the result of companies attempting to generate focused Twitter or Instagram conversations, so viewers would slip those hashtagged phrases into their Tweets and they would be more easily located by fellow Tweeters who were trying to find information on that particular subject matter.
Facebook’s latest blog post states that between 88 and 100 million viewers are engaged on Facebook during primetime television. Judging by those stats, and the number of hashtags constantly bombarding viewers, it probably didn’t take a genius to figure out that Facebook needed to join the hashtag party. The company cited some of the benefits of this update on its blog.
Facebook’s Blog announcement cites the following uses for their new hashtag system:
“• Search for a specific hashtag from your search bar. For example, #NBAFinals.
• Click on hashtags that originate on other services, such as Instagram.
• Compose posts directly from the hashtag feed and search results.”
So my advice is that you add all of the above to your social media strategy. And don’t forget to keep up-to-date on the latest changes from Facebook and it’s many rivals. Because trust me, this is not the last of the updates.
Anthony Gaenzle – Director of Marketing
