Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 1 If you’re serious about running a marketing campaign across social media channels, try using a hashtag as part of your strategy. Hashtags are not only a great way to spread brand awareness, but they’re easy to search on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr. (Poor Facebook — it still can’t get its hash-act together.) To ensure success of your hashtag strategy, take the time to consider the following steps. First, decide why you want your marketplace to use a hashtag. Is it simply to share your brand name with their your followers and your followers’ followers? To share your username (which is hopefully consistent among all hashtag-friendly channels)? Or is it to emphasize a certain aspect of your brand experience? For instance, Rochester Institute of Technology recently used #RITgrad to crowdsource students’ experiences with commencement. Next, make the hashtag as easy for users to use as possible. Keep it relatively short in respect of Twitter’s 140-character limit and to increase the possibilities of your hashtag appearing in retweets. And unless your company uses an acronym (like RIT), create a hashtag with all lowercase letters. Mixed case hashtags are tough for users to type (especially those on mobile devices). Regardless of what you choose, make sure that the hashtag hasn’t already been used for another purpose. The easiest way to check this out is to pop your desired hashtag in Twitter’s search bar. (You can also try the search bars in your other social channels for good measure.) Tagdef is another good tool for getting the scoop on existing hashtags. Then when the time is right for all components of your campaign, spread the word! Encourage use across all your hashtag-friendly platforms. Consider making an investment in Twitter ads that tell new leads about your hashtag-tinged campaign. Over the course of your campaign, be sure to measure how the hashtag is being used. Tweetreach and Hashtracking are affordable options. Simply Measured is great for large company campaigns. Track the following: Which social channels use the tag the most? What is the ratio of use between your brand and other users (in other words, are you the only one using the tag)? Which influencers have used your tag in their posts or tweets? What questions do you have about the use of hashtags? Sound off in the comments and I’ll be sure to provide assistance. Photo Credit: Flickr CC / quinnaya Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article was written for Business 2 Community by Lisa Kalner Williams.Learn how to publish your content on B2C Author: Lisa Kalner Williams Follow @kalnerwilliams Lisa Kalner Williams is a social media strategist at Sierra Tierra Marketing and an instructor at Learn Social With Lisa, an online social media school.… View full profile ›More by this author:5 Mobile Mistakes Social Media Gurus Make Every DayIs Facebook Ready To Go Mobile in 2014?How to Use Facebook Contests to Generate Qualified Leads