A hashtag (#) is a word or keyword phrase with a “#” sign placed in the front. This seemingly ordinary symbol that was interpreted as a number sign for decades now has infinite power and potential to change the business world. The impact of hashtags on modern culture has become undeniably huge today – in 2011, a hashtag of a street vendor’s name in Tunisia spread on Twitter and started revolutions throughout the Middle East, and in 2012, the American Dialect Society declared “hashtag” as word of the year.

Hashtags are now an exciting, new way of marketing for the business world today that allow for businesses to create engagement, interaction, and conversation with their targeted audiences. Highly targeted brand messages in forms of hashtags, when used in a proper and effective way, help drive businesses’ brand recognition, positively impact customer loyalty, and enhance brand visibility.

For example, Red Bull’s hashtag #givesyouwings became extremely popular with their targeted customers and effectively created brand awareness across users of various social networking platforms. Customers around the globe interacted with each other as well as the company by taking pictures of their Red Bull drinks and sharing it on social networking websites with the hashtag #givesyouwings. Domino’s Pizza UK had an event in which they offered 1 pence off each pizza for every person who tweeted #letsdolunch. The tweets containing the hashtag added up and dropped the price of each pizza from £15.99 to £7.74.

Through the use of hashtags, businesses are easily able to interact with their targeted audiences… and this is where the magic happens. The interaction turns the audiences to customers.

#HashtagsAreNowBusinessEssentials.

Sources:

http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/02/hashtags-social-media-content/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevecooper/2013/03/31/5-reasons-businesses-should-care-about-hashtags/

http://www.business2community.com/infographics/history-power-hashtags-social-media-marketing-infographic-0997768