Have you ever felt like you're just creating "smoke signals" on Twitter to a distant and vague target - and that you'd rather be sending something as direct as a telegram?
One feature of Twitter that many people and brands don't understand are hashtags (#). They're everywhere, and their use is reckless. In fact, the hashtag landscape is reminiscent of the lawless-ness of the wild, wild west. Too often it looks like users are shooting hashags off from the hip with no real target (or point) in mind. But there's real power in hashtags - power to connect based on a specific topic, to anyone in the Twitterverse interested in it.
If you're in the consulting business, Twitter can be a great place to connect with prospects from all over the country and world...even beyond just your own followers. Circle the wagons and we'll get into how to make effective use of those hashtags, folks.
Hashtag Basics
Alrighty, let's make sure you're up to snuff on some Twitter hashtag basics. By now you've probably figured out that a hashtag is this little character "#" that shares a home with your "3" button on your keyboard. Once you've found it, there are three main rules when it comes to hashtags. First, when you're creating a hashtag phrase, you can't have any spaces in it. For example, #wildwildwest would trend and track for "wild wild west" but #wild wild west would only trend and track for "wild." Second, hashtags are not case-sensitive, so don't worry about your capital and lower case letters. Finally, there are no pre-assigned hashtags, which means that you can create your own and get them trending if you have enough of an audience!
Now that creating a hashtag won't cause a fuss, you'll want to know why they're used. Hashtags are used to keep track of a topic so users can see all posts related to that topic, even if they aren't following everyone talking about it. That way you can search for things like #nbafinals and see what people on Twitter are talking about related to that topic...as long as they used the hashtag #nbafinals.
Get Your Prospects in Your Sights
You need to take a targeted approach when using hashtags and make sure that you're shooting straight and true. Since you want to target specific prospects, you'll need some data.
Prospectin' is made a lot easier with online tools like Tweet Binder and Hash Tracking, along with a flurry of others. Below is an example of the results that Tweet Binder puts out on a specific hashtag search for #marketingresearch.
You'll want to use these hashtag data tools to see how terms specific to your industry are trending and what their popularity is. The above example only saw 40 tweets within 7 days. This may seem like a low number but even if the number is low, the posts may be very relevant and of great quality to your business. It all depends on whose eyes are seeing the tweets.
That said, you don't want to go in guns blazing with an extremely popular hashtag and expect results. This is because you'll probably get lost among all of the other tweets from other users. On the other hand, it doesn't hurt to join the herd once in a while just to get in on the conversation - just don't spend too much time vying for attention there.
Finding a relevant hashtag to join a good discussion or start your own is going to require some thought. You'll need to identify what your prospects are talking about on Twitter and, related to that, their major pain points. A good place to start is by looking at what keywords are being used on prospects' websites; LinkedIn is also a good watering hole to check out. The groups on LinkedIn provide some great input for potential hashtags to validate on the previously mentioned hashtag analytic sites.
In general, you want to show your mastery and knowledge of a topic when you post about it as a consultant. If you're really confident, you can combine your hashtags with a direct message to a company/individual to get even more direct engagement. This gives your tweet better luck than a 7,2 off-suit deal in poker to get re-tweeted and shared on the site.
Show Off Your Personality
Twitter is a place where you can have some fun and show off your brand's personality too, especially with hashtags. Because you can create new hashtags, you can use them to add some humor to your posts. Current news events can be good topics to comment on and have fun with; you can even use events within your industry that your followers/prospects are engaging with. Many people (including myself) will use hashtags sarcastically, not trying to engage an audience at all but to use them for your followers' amusement. Everyone loves a good laugh - just be sure it's not in bad taste.
Cool Your Guns, Don't Go Too Hashtag Crazy
Now that you're more excited than a prospector with a pan full of gold, and you're chomping at the bit to use hashtags y'all have to slow down. When you're not trying to be humorous with hashtags, only limit your post to contain 1 or 2 hashtags. You want to be specific, and you want your prospects to see that, too. It's easy to make your post too generic and try to incorporate too many hashtags.
Hashtags are a great tool to broaden your audience and a targeted effort will get your message to a more relevant and valuable group. Once you do your research and get into the swing of things, you'll be the best hashtag user in the West, or East/North/South. As with all social media, if you're persistent you'll see results. Get right back on the horse if your first few forays into hashtags aren't successful!