The numbers don’t lie when it comes to why you should be including hashtags in your messaging on Twitter.

In this recent article “How to Use Hashtags: How Many, Best Ones, and Where to Use Them” on the Buffer blog, Kevan Lee cites some amazing statistics, including the fact that tweets with hashtags generate twice the engagement of messages without hashtags.

Courtesy of Buffer

There also a RadiumOne survey revealing that 43 percent of respondents think hashtags are useful and 34% use them to search and follow categories and brands of interest.

This research helps us better understand the important role hashtags play when we are composing Twitter messages. 

When adding hashtags to our messaging, it’s also critical to use the hashtags that our audience is searching for and following.

Are you ready to increase your engagement?

Take a look at my 5 Reasons Why Every Twitter Message Should Include a #Hashtag:

1 - Branded Hashtags: The branded hashtag is a great way to consistently spread your message. As you can see from this example, when someone clicks on #JustDoIt, it brings up a stream of content related to Nike.

Imagine having the ability to achieve similar results for your brand! It can be done.

One trick for monitoring hashtags during the day is utilizing a product called TweetDeck.

Once you have TweeDeck you can set up columns to follow certain hashtags. This will allow you to engage with more and more people who are also these #s.  

2 - Event Hashtags: Events are the perfect opportunity for creating a unique hashtag, whether it’s a physical event or even a webinar. As we can see from this CiscoLive example, not only has Cisco created a dedicated Twitter handle for their event, they are also keeping it active even after the event has concluded. You can see from this tweet and more, here, how they have taken advantage of the event hashtag #CLUS.  

Another example is #MSInspire, the annual Microsoft Inspire user conference. What we learn from these two samples is that the event hashtags are live before, during and after the event itself. The chatter on twitter is still active more than two weeks later. This keeps the event top of mind!

5 - Campaign Hashtags: Coca Cola has had some interesting marketing initiatives over the years. One of their recent campaigns included the use of hashtags. #ShareaCoke is great example of a campaign hashtag. Various organizations and individuals are including the hashtag as well as coke merchandise within in their Twitter messaging. This in turn provides plenty of free publicity for Coca Cola!

4 - Product Hashtags: Product hashtags allow you categorize products and/or services that you want to talk about in your Twitter messaging. Here are two examples: Microsoft Office 365 (#Office365) and Microsoft Dynamics 365 (#DYN365). We can see from the QuantiQTechnology message that they also included a couple of additional hashtags (#ERP and #Pharmaceutical), because they wanted 1) to focus on the Pharmaceutical Industry and 2) to classify their message as relating to ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software.

5 - Trending Hashtags: Trending hashtags could be any one of the above types of hashtags that has basically “gone viral” because it has become one of most popular subjects discussed on Twitter. Within Twitter you can define your own focus area for trending hashtags. So, for example, I might want to find out what hashtags are trending in Tampa, FL where I live.

Now that we have illustrated examples of the various types of hashtags you might use, we strongly encourage you to make sure that you include them in your Twitter messaging. Remember, a good rule of thumb is to limit yourself, where possible, to no more than two hashtags in a given message.

One last tip: Always make sure to add a powerful eye-catching image to your message. Even with hashtags, it’s the imagery that will grab the most attention first.

#Hashtag away!!

What are some of your favorite hashtags? Drop me an email jon.rivers@marketingmonarchs.com