Social Media Fundamentals for Marketers

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Social Media Management

Application for Social Business

Copyrights 2012 Simplify360

www.simplify360.com

Simplify360 2012

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

01. Abstract 04

MAIN

How important is it to Invest in Reputation Management?

04

SOCIAL MEDIA-The need

08

Getting the right team for a

Social Media Campaign

06

How to handle negativity on social media platforms?

12

Engagement or Likes: What

works better for Facebook?

10

How do you connect with your fans through Facebook Ads?

14

How are companies using social media for customer service?

17

Creating Facebook Content Strategy Using Facebook Analytics 20

Five essential steps of successful social media marketing

22

How to Use Hashtags for Successful Twitter Marketing? 24

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Abstract With social media becoming an integral part of marketing needs of

businesses and brands. This book will help marketers understand the social

media better. Social Media Fundamentals for Marketers book guides you

through the different platforms on social media and how to use them

effectively.

The core objective of the book is to help marketers in coming up with better

social media strategy and help them build a strong presence on different

online platforms.

The key sections of the report:

How Important is it to Invest in Reputation Management Getting the right team for a Social Media Campaign


Engagement or Likes: What works better for Facebook?

How to handle negativity on social media platforms?

How do you connect with your fans through Facebook Ads? How are companies using social media for customer service?

Creating Facebook Content Strategy Using Facebook Analytics Five essential steps of successful social media marketing

How To Use Hash tags For Successful Twitter Marketing

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How important is it to Invest in Reputation

Management?

Reputation Management can be broadly defined as managing the reputation of a company; it could be a large company wanting to promote itself or its products or it could be a newly formed company wishing to gain visibility or create a buzz about itself.

Reputation Management can be sought for three basic reasons- 1. To build a good reputation for a company that has just entered the market. 2. To keep up the good image of a company in public eye, which is also called

maintenance. 3. To rebuild faith of consumers in a company, which has hit a bad patch due to negative

publicity?

Why to invest in Reputation Management

In the last one year Reputation Management has become very important on the net. As people have really become hooked on to the internet with social media becoming viral, the chances of visibility of any company have increased manifolds. This visibility has its positive as well as negative impact. While there will be bouquets, there will be brickbats in equal numbers if not less.

The cost of hiring a firm for reputation

management will be almost equal to that of

hiring a content writer, but here one gets an

experienced team to help guide and save

the company from the pitfalls of the

internet. Sometimes when the company

tries to handle the reputation management

on their own, they end up making matters

worse.

Reputation Management should be treated

in the same manner as branding. While

branding is about the product or services, Reputation Management is about how one

delivers on that promise. Both are interlinked. Companies spend years building a

reputation for themselves, so it is crucial to protect their brand or product. As bloggers are

taking over newspapers, it is essential for companies and individuals to keep their

reputation squeaky clean online.

The vital question here would be how much people value their brand online? Probably

more than the amount of resources they are willing to put together to manage it. It is

always better for companies to invest in reputation management before it starts costing

the company in lost sales and a tarnished online image. It will not only protect the

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/03/the-11-most-hated-american-companies_n_856471.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/03/the-11-most-hated-american-companies_n_856471.html

http://searchengineland.com/5-key-strategies-to-build-your-brand-online-39420

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company’s brand but also stop unscrupulous rivals taking advantage by getting negative

content high up in the search results of its brand and taking its space.

Now that everyone is into blogging, many potential customers, job applicants and

investors will first research a company on Google before they come to a conclusion. A

company that wishes to sell its business has to make sure that it is immaculate online.

For this, strategy has to be developed to feed positive content to repress the first few

pages and help to cover up the negative results which could be costing a company. It will

help in removing any libelous slander against the company on websites.

It is a general notion that whatever ranks on Google is true and can be trusted. Therefore,

to increase visibility and positive buzz, proper planning and investment on Reputation

Management should be an integral part of a company’s strategy.

http://www.internetmarketingduru.com/managing-your-reputation-online-through-google-search-suggest-results/

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Getting the right team for a Social Media

Campaign

When you start or plan to start a social media campaign, the first variable that you are

facing is the team. You need to get the right set of people to get this challenging task

done. If the team is done right, then half the task is done. Most companies grapple with

the qualities to look for in the members of the team that they need for doing their Social

Media campaign.

Social media isn’t something that can

just be assigned to someone any more

than you can just assign someone to

be the homecoming king.

Adding a social media• to that junior

public affairs officer’s job description

isn’t suddenly going to make wonders

happen. In fact it is a perfect recipe for

disaster.

This is why so many social media initiatives fail-not because of technology or policy, but

because of people. We talk often about what department should lead social media, how to

get leadership buy-in for social media, or what technology should be used, and while those

are important discussions to have, you should be focused on identifying WHO should be

leading the social media initiatives.

The best person right now might be X in Marketing, but what if X leaves the organization? Who leads the social media initiatives then? The answer isn’t necessarily X’s replacement. It might beY in HR. It might be that new guy over in community relations, or maybe it’s your webmaster. The point is that social media doesn’t fit nicely into just one job description. There’s a very real human element to it, and identifying the person, even if it is the right position is often the biggest determination in the success or failure of your social media initiatives

So what is that magic mix that can get the job done for you? I am going to tell you a few things that I have learned, more as guidelines and not hard and fast rules as such .Here they are:

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In line with the Organization: Every member of your team needs to be a part of your organization in mind; they need to understand the full picture of the mission and the essence of your organization. Their interest should be in the mission and not just the financial angle of being in the team. Understands all the aspects of Social Media: The members of the team should be people who know the real transformational power of social media and not a bunch of people with twitter and Facebook ids. They should understand that it’s not about applying the same old processes to new tools. It’s about fundamentally transforming the way your organization interacts with the public, your customers and with each other. Communicative by choice: The team has to be a set of people that enjoy being around and are good at driving conversations and keeping people engaged on a consistent basis. A group of snobs who are always running around with their head in the clouds will simply not cut it; their personality will be counter-productive online. That may end up hurting your brand more than helping it. Not afraid to goof up : Let us admit it, not all ideas are good all the time, but what the team needs is a continuous flow of ideas, even if a majority of them get shot down by the customer or the higher management. You really cannot afford to have people who will retract into a shell the minute someone shoots down their idea, there should be no fear of failure, but the ability to take it and move on is the key Team Players: They need to innately enjoy working in diverse teams and thrive on the thrills and pressures that this brings Not Shift based people: The day long news cycle is dead and it is all full time and real time now, so if you have a team that believes in time shifting and closes shop at 5:00 pm, your social media campaign is as good as dead, you need people who are willing to stretch it. By saying that, what I mean is, flexibility in schedules to suit needs is the key Can rise above statistics: What you do not want is a team that spews out numbers at the touch of a button and churns out a ton of statistics which go way above the head of everyone else. What you want is a team that understands the expectations and deliverables and communicates in responsive and simple language. Corporate marketing speak, statistics, facts, and figures are good, but when was the last time you got inspired by a pie chart? Find people who can connect with their colleagues/customers/clients on a personal level

Now that I think about it, these are many of the same qualities that exist in any leader, right? So, what you need is a team full of people with great communicative skills and leadership skills .Once you have the team in place, the next step is to have roles and access control defined and then put them in the sea to see how they swim. Simplify360 can help you with really simplifying that with the best-in-class team management features that it offers in a very easy to use and intuitive interface.

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IF THE NEWS IS IMPORTANT, IT WILL FIND ME…..This line defines the new power shift in

the field of communication and trust on Social Media platforms. Here in this article I am

trying to investigate what makes it so adoptable, how it explore human psychology and

why companies needs to tab this before it’s too late.

Aspect of Adoptability Social media continues to have a tremendous impact on how

people behave online; how they search, play, converse, form communities, build and

maintain relationships; and how they create, tag, modify and share content across any

number of sites and devices.

In response to the ever-increasing penetration rate of social media services and the fierce

competition among new entrants and incumbents, new business models emerge

regularly, where firms blend unique technologies and business models to build

competitive. At the same time, content-sharing sites, microblogs, social networks, wikis

and a plethora of other consumer-oriented services and platforms continue to grow.

Adoptability of social platform continue to grow rapidly as the comfort level, need for

presence, digital relationship, reputation, group ego and feeling of expressing self identity

increases among people.

HONEYCOMB MODEL

This honeycomb model helps explain the implications that each block can have for how

firms should engage with social media in three important ways.

1. Different specific facets of the social

media user experience.

2. Allows managers to conduct a focused

a priori study of their firms’ specific

‘community needs

3. Lens for monitoring how dynamic

changes of the community’s needs vis-à-vis

changes of the social media tools present

implications for the firm.

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Exploring the Psychology

The shift in paradigm of social power has already happened; new beliefs have redefined

the way power is perceived. The stronger social network you have the more powerful you

are perceived socially. Your views/opinions/judgments all become more important to

others, if you belong to this elite group. This shift in power has been made possible largely

as a result of rapid developments in social networking sites. The key change brought

about by this has been from “visiting” to “participating” and forming communities in the

on-line world.

The availability of “wiki” applications has led to the creation of consumer-created content,

which is disseminated via blogs, reviews, user groups, forums and other social networks.

One intuitive hypothesis is that “popular” people (those with vast, far-reaching, and

significant networks or contacts) will have connections both in the real as well as in the

virtual world; thus the number of people one deals with in the real or physical world

should be positively correlated with the number of virtual or electronic contacts one has.

On the other hand, a less intuitive (but still feasible) hypothesis may be that people who

are less popular or charismatic in the real world may somehow “compensate” for their

lack of charm by over-indulging in virtual social networking sites (and, unsurprisingly,

spend more time in the virtual world than in the real world). Whichever is the case Social

Media has strengthened itself to all kind of people.

Social Media puts the “public” into PR and the “market” into marketing.

The evolution of Social Media has brought tremendous opportunities for companies; the

differentiation that has to be ensured before exploring social media platforms is to be

strategies. It depends on the nature of business, target audience and AIOs (Activity,

interest and opinion) of target audience on different Social Media platforms. Above

mentioned Honeycomb Model and study of target audience psychology can be a huge help

for the companies.

Determining what customer wants is essential for any company, and trend spotting has

become a multi-billion dollar business. However, it is becoming tougher. In today’s high-

speed digital age, information and ideas spread at rates never before imagined, and, as a

result, customer wants and needs have an unprecedented turnaround time. Companies

only hope of keeping up is to join the Internet age.

Whatever the method of dialogue, it is clear that customers will increasingly make their

views known, to each other or to companies, as the technology to do so become easier to

use and those companies who can listen and engage will reap the benefit which others

can only dream of.

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Engagement or Likes: What works better for

Facebook?

There was a time when a page with the highest number of fans/likes was considered to

be a successful page but do you think is it working the same way now?

Likes were always considered as the main metrics to judge the success of the page but

with the changing time, engagement has taken a front seat. Today, it is more important to

measure your engagement level than likes. Businesses are clear on whom they want to

target and what type of content they want to share to have a highly engaging and

interactive page.

Why Engagement and not likes?

Social media is all about engaging with your fans/audience. There is no point of having

thousands of fans but no engagement. Such fans are just the headcounts and not

contributing to the page in any way. If there is no interaction on the page, then you are

losing the game. Your content won’t reach out to people; there are less likely chances that

will turn up to your page. Quality is always better than Quantity.

Even if you have small but highly interactive fan group, they work as your brand

ambassadors or influencers. They influence others to like your page. For example, if a fan

comments on the post or share your content or participate in any activity on the page

then they are increasing your viral reach, as their participation will appear on their feeds or

on the page, which will let you reach out many people at the same time.

So, pushing the right kind of content on the page and encouraging fans to engage with the

brand/business is the most important aspect of social media and business should adopt

this if they want success.

Engagement with very fast pace is becoming the most important metric to judge success

of the page.

We never say likes are not important, they are very important for a page to start

engagement but always target right audience, who are interested in you as a

brand/business because this will only lead to right kind of engagement.

How does it work?

Few months back Facebook introduced “Talking about this”. This’ Metric slated to roll out

to users this week, this new metric measures ‘stories,’ or content users share on Facebook

that can be featured in users’ News Feeds.

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Working in social media field gives us opportunity to observe different pattern. We work

for different clients and each client gives us different areas to explore. Working with one

of the client from retail industry, we have observed that page is successful if you have

high level of engagement despite of average number of fans.

We targeted the right audience and shared the quality content which helped us in

increasing the engagement on the page and getting new fans through the post, pictures

and feeds shared by fans. Giving example of client and one of its competitor will show

how higher number of fans does not mean higher level of engagement.

Data below also gives clear picture of the fact that higher number of fans does not mean

higher level of engagement.

Fanpage 1 has more number of fans than

fanpage 2 but the interaction rate on fanpage

2 is higher than fanpage 1.

Rightly said by Jay Baer: “Activate your fans, don’t just collect them like baseball cards.”

So, make engagement your power!!!!

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How to handle negativity on social media

platforms?

A very famous Dell story is the best example of how negativity can trash your brand

image. In 2005, a blog post from an influential blogger about the dell’s pathetic customer

service created a viral effect. Dell did not respond to the blog promptly, which lead to

worsen situation, where lot of people started commenting on the blog and sharing their

experiences about bad customer service from dell. By the time dell responded to the

complaint, damage was done.

Another example is of Nestle and Greenpeace. Where Greenpeace started a campaign

against nestle, posting videos of how Nestlé, maker of Kit Kat, uses palm oil from

companies that are trashing Indonesian rainforests, threatening the livelihoods of local

people and pushing orangutans towards extinction. Nestle mismanaged the whole

situation which created lot of negativity for the brand.

Social media is all about conversations. These can be Positive as well as Negative .

Positive conversations are always considered as blessings and are welcomed anytime

whereas negative conversations are like a nightmare. But as a brand/business you have

to handle both, you just can’t close your eyes. Social media is a two way conversation

channel.

While working with clients on social media, we

encounter situations where customers are not

satisfied with the product or services. These

conversations could be complaints or feedbacks.

We believe these situations can be utilized to

strengthen the relationship between

brand/businesses and customers.

http://socialmediacases.blogspot.in/2011/12/social-media-in-customer-service-case.html

http://www.slideshare.net/tiphereth/kt-influence-case-study

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How to handle negative conversations?

Negative conversations are the part of social

media, avoiding or deleting these conversation

will only worsen the situation. Following are the

set of rules or best practices which we follow

while working with clients

1. Never Ignore or Delete negative

comment: Deleting or ignoring the

comments will give out the very bad

impression about the brand. This will only show how much you value your

customer’s feedback. Deleting negative comments is strictly no no.

2. Promptly acknowledge the feedback: Negative feedback need quick and prompt

reply. In our case we never delay in reply to negative comments. Delay in

acknowledging the feedback may be taken as brand/business’s laid back attitude

towards your customers

3. Take the conversations offline: We would always suggest taking the conversation

offline. Your first response should be public. Then you can take it forward as a

private conversation. Send them message on email. This will also give a personal

touch.

4. Appreciate the feedback: Making customer feel like a king will always help you in

building strong bonding. Appreciate their feedback and Make them feel that their

feedback has helped your brand in becoming better.

5. Create positivity: Through excellent customer experience Change the negative

conversation to the positive one through customer service. Provide them best of

customer service which will help you in getting the positive words about the

business.

6. Stay connected to the customer: Keep track of all the developments happening on

the issue. Stay connected to the customer, until they are satisfied with the result.

Negative comments might irate you sometimes but be calm. Try to be positive. These

types of conversations do not always harm your brand. If tackled properly they can lay a

strong foundation of customer relationship.

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How do you connect with your fans through Facebook Ads?

Facebook as a social media platform gives user an

opportunity and power to connect and share with

the world. One of the ways to connect with your

audience on Facebook is Facebook ads.

Facebook ads have gained much popularity

amongst businesses. We have been running ads

for our clients to gain more fans and visibility.

Facebook Ads lets you create and increase your

community base and communicate with them on daily basis.

Facebook ads work on many factors, which play a vital role in making the campaign successful.

Target the right audience: Facebook ads allow you to target the audience you to reach

out through your ads

Advertisers can target based on

1. Location, Language, Education, and Work 2. Age, Gender, Birthday, and Relationship

Status 3. Likes & Interests 4. Friends of Connections: Friends of

Connections targeting allows you to target the friends of users already connected to your Page or App to reach a more relevant audience

5. Connections: Connections targeting allows you to target your ad to current fans of your Page for promoting special offers and driving customer loyalty

6. Designing Facebook ads

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After indentifying the target audience, second comes the designing of the ads. We would suggest you to create 2-4 sets of ad sets. Facebook Ads basically consists of:

1. Title 2. Image 3. Body

Advertising Campaign needs to be optimized based on these three parameters, along with

target filter. It is suggested that while creating ads, there should be 3-4 variation of the same ads. Variations can be in image or body. This will help you in analyzing which ad works best for the target group. Some Best Practices for designing the ads

Always use an image which goes well with the ad content. Image should depict the message you want to convey through your ad

1. Message should be short, crisp and to the point. 2. Add call to action to your message. For example

“like us now to avail 50% discount on beauty products”.

Analyzing and Optimizing

Once the ads are running, you need to monitor and analyze them continuously to know which ad is performing well. Using the ads report you can analyze which text and which image is working better for you. On reviewing the report you can anytime pause the non performing ads and reallocate the budget to the performing ads.

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Optimization of ads is very important in order to bring new content and image this will give you better results as there are chances of audience getting bored with same old content. We would suggest optimizing your ads whenever you see decrease in the CTR. Important Success metrics for Ads

1. Social Reach: People who saw your ads with the name of their friends who liked your page, RSVPed your event or used your app

2. Connections: number of people liked your page, RSVPed your event or installed your app within 24 hrs of seeing your ad

3. Clicks: A click is counted when a person clicks through your ad to your landing page. This includes liking your Page, RSVPing to your event, or installing your app within the ad creative.

4. CTR(Click-Through Rate): Number of clicks ads received divided by the number of times they were shown on the site.

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How are companies using social media for customer service? Every avalanche is a result of small disturbance in the surface of mountain range. They are unpredictable and dangerous. In today’s online scenario, the connection between customers and brands have created similar surface which can create an avalanche on brand’s reputation.

Social Media has become number one platform to vent out bad product or service experience. There are many examples where brand’s reputation have been put on stake due to ignorance towards complain in social media.

The most famous example can be the “United breaks Guitar” where a singer-song writers guitar was broken during flight at United. When the artist mentioned the damage to the customer service, he was ignored. As a result, he went on to publish a Youtube video about the incident which went instant viral, damaging the reputation of United. The issue was resolves after United responded to complain and reimbursed the artist.

Therefore, social media is becoming increasingly crowded with customer complaints and dissatisfaction. Being present in social media sites and responding to queries and complaints is becoming more important than before. Many brands have already built a resource and process to address the issue of social media customer service.

Below are some of the important ways in which social media can be used to enhance customer service.

Creating online social profiles and being there. The first step is to create your online existence and be present officially. Creating profiles allows your customers to identify you and makes it easier for them to engage. Rather than shouting at the world, your online presence will make it easier for your customers to seek help to you when needed.

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Listening conversation about your brand. People are never going to find your presence unless you start engaging with them. The best way to engage is always to listening to conversation related to your brand and start responding. Proactively engaging with prospects and customers can increase your visibility and create better experience for your customers.

Creating Content Related to your Product/Service. Your customers are continuously

seeking help and searching for relevant content. You can be that content provider.

Creating content like blog posts or video tutorial are essential part of conversation

between brands and customers.

Real-time Response. Customer delights has become an important aspect into customer

experience. One of the ways in which social media can help create that delight is through

real-time response to customer’s online query. Immediate response to the complaints or

mentions can create ever lasting impression on customer than through direct marketing

strategy.

Communicating Offers and Deals. One way to increase interest among your customers is

to offer discounts and deals through your social networking channels. This will help you

reach out to larger audience and energize customers to participate. DELL was one of the

first brands to exploit these fundamentals and earn millions through investment in their

Twitter Channels.

But how do you measure your performance? Every social media activities gain response from the crowd. Therefore, in order to measure

the performance of your social media activities, you need to consider exact metric which

you will be tracking continuously as follow:

1. Interactions:Keep track of number of fans

and followers and their activity related to your

profiles like ReTweets, Comments, and Likes etc.

Keep daily track of how many mentions your

brand received in all the networking platforms.

2. Responders: Number of people who have

interacted with your brands and the rate at

which it is increasing.

3. Level Sentiments: In addition to tracking

mentions of your brands, you need to drill down

to the sentiments of customers. The goal should

be to provoke positive sentiments and reduce

the number of negative complains and

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sentiments.

4. Feedback: Customer Feedback is an important part of customer services, through which

company can gain important insights. Company can also use feedback count such as

number of participants in Survey or Polls, or special programs to measure the

effectiveness of the social media customer service.

Social Media has changed the way customers and brands interact with each other. It

depends upon the requirement of company to decide if they want to adopt social media as

their way to interact with their customers.

Strategy to use social media as customer service can vary accordingly with each company

and it’s the responsibility of company to research into the case and adopts the best way

to engage in social media.

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Creating Facebook Content Strategy Using Facebook Analytics

Facebook is one of the best platforms to share content. But understanding on what works

best for brand/business is important. Content plays a vital role in making a page

successful.

For any business/ Brand it is necessary to analyze their data in order to get the most out

of it. But with so much information available, you need to select the one which is suitable

best to create a sound content strategy.

What should you analyze?

As mentioned above it is very important to analyze the right data to know what kind of

content your fans like. Analyze your page activity

Comments and likes on the Page:

First thing to analyze on the page is to see whether your posts are getting enough

comments and likes. Understand all about the updates on your page. Get graphical

presentations of number of updates posted and number of comments and likes received.

A graphical presentation will always help you to understand better. Analyzing comments

and likes will give you an idea of content popularity.

Distribution trend of Page post by type

Study the content consumption to make better strategies. Distribution trend will help you

in analyzing which content type is working best for the page. This will give you an overall

idea of comments and likes each type of content is getting. Based on this you can decide

on what type of content is liked by your fans.


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Page Consumption Trend

Page consumption trend is the trend for the number of times people clicked on any of

your content; this data will give the number of people who consumed your data actually.

This helps you in an idea of what type of posts is consumed more by fans. Understand the

overall clicks/ views on different post and know what works and what doesn’t.

Analyzing the right data is what counts. For

creating a sound strategy you need to

analyze regularly. A good content strategy

leads to better engagement and better

engagement leads to success.

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Five essential steps of successful social media marketing

Social media is not restricted to marketing and brand building. More and more smart businesses are integrating social media participation as part of their knowledge management strategy which is product/service development, recruiting, employee engagement and turnover, brand building, customer satisfaction and relations, business development and more. Additionally, Social Media Marketing is often utilized to promote a group of the associated site, allowing for a good business to customer relationship.

Social Media Marketing is a term that portrays the application of social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other online two-way media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. In this competitive world there are a number of companies have adopted this strategy.

So how do you think you can stand out in this competitive market using the social media marketing tool? Here are few strategies that will help you to make a distinctive position of your product or company amongst your target audience on social media websites. Keep it short and simple

There is not much time for the readers to go through complicated long promotional messages. So it very necessary to keep the note very clear and crisp. Do not add unwanted words which are not related with the offer. A difficult message is not useful and is hard to bear in mind.

Customize it

Every social networking site has its own features and characteristics. The approaches of the Facebook members are very different from that of the LinkdIn audience. So, the message should be designed suiting to the place and keeping in mind the target audience.

Talk about the target audience

The content in the message should cater to the customer’s needs and not only about the product. Consistently utilize social media to connect to potential customers. It is good not to be too much self-interested, instead the content should be more on the target audience and how your products will be useful for them.

Choose the right place

There are new social networkings websites coming up every day, however there are few common websites where most active customers & influencers spend time online then listen and take notes. Technorati, Google Blog Search, Ice Rocket, Bloglines, Twitter Search,

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AideRSS and HubSpot HubFeed are few social media monitoring tools through which you can select where to place you message.

Select the right time

There are a quite a few social media tracking tools accessible such as Google alerts and socialmention that permit you to look for for keywords online. It is vital to observe your online status and social media mentions so you can deal with comments posted about your company or product. Thus you can also monitor the customer requirements and can assist him/her in what he needs rather than promotion about your company or the product.

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How to Use Hashtags for Successful Twitter

Marketing

For the last one month, Twitter has been abuzz with quizzes organised by a particular soft drink brand using hashtags. The wave of conversations the hashtag generated prompted several other brands to emulate the concept and build fan base. In the past, several other brands have successfully used hashtag campaigns for Twitter marketing, while some (like McDonalds) saw their worst nightmares come true with “bash”tags. So what makes a Twitter campaign using hashtags click? 1. Make it simple silly When you are deciding on a hashtag, make sure it is new. Using a already used tag will automatically nullify the changes of the hashtag to make it to trending topics. Also, do remember, Twitter comes with a 140 character limit. So, make sure your hashtag is not too big. That will save some space for the users to put in their thoughts.

2. Trendy tags trend The essence of hashtags is to communicate a message. The hashtag should be able to communicate the message in simple yet bold terms. Suitable keywords representing the brand or the industry would just pep up the buzz around the brand. Mundane tags that only talk about the brand will surely get thumbs down from users. A successful and popular hashtag needs the “X” factor to trend.

3. Caution – Risky road ahead Good things come with their share of side effects. You need to exercise caution at every level to ensure that your hahstag campaign does not generate the buzz that you were not looking for. McDonalds had to pay for their #McDStories with a tumultuous wave of criticism flying its way on Twitter. Even American president contender Mitt Romney’s PR campaign met with a thud on his birthday when people hijacked the occasion to express their dislike for him. 4. Abuse and you are out If you think you can cash in on a popular hashtag and use it to promote your own product, think again. The lesson we learnt from the backlash Kenneth Cole received for using a hashtag related to Egypt uprising, was that hashtag abuse has no place on Twitter. Official guidelines make it amply clear. 5. Bull’s Eye

Once you have your unique and original hashtag, all you need to do is to set yourself a target audience. Once you set the tongues waggling, BAZINGA! There’s no stopping your hashtag from emerging on to the trends map.

https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23McDstories

https://support.twitter.com/articles/49309-what-are-hashtags-symbols

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Documents

Social Media Fundamentals for Marketers