#Hashtags

This week, Chapter 7 of Guy Kawaski’s book “The Art of Social Media” was assigned as

our reading. The chapter was entitled “How to Socialize Events” and gave a lot of helpful

tips. I will share my favorite one with you!

In Chapter 7, the usage of hashtags was discussed. Multiple social media platforms

use hashtags, from image-focused Instagram to text-based Twitter and of course

Facebook. The book described how to choose a hashtag, and their advice was to

keep it short and generic. It needs to be short so people can easily remember it

and actually use it. The hashtag should not be something too specific or time-expirable.

This advice on hashtags can be applied to something that is not necessarily a public

event attended by many. For example, I could apply these tips while covering an

ONU PRSSA firm trip on social media. I would want to use the hashtag #ONUPRSSA

as opposed to #ONUPRSSAFirmTripChicago.

Keeping to just the hashtag #ONUPRSSA will pull up all of the events and trips

that ONU PRSSA does (as long as the other posts included the hashtag). If someone

is interested in learning about what other activities ONU PRSSA engages in, all they

would have to do is search the one hashtag #ONUPRSSA. This creates ease for the

user so they can view everything with ONU PRSSA. Viewers do not and will not go

out of their way to dig for a very specific hashtag.

#ONUPRSSA is already a mouthful already, so why add to the mess by adding

extra words when creating a hashtag? I want to keep #ONUPRSSA together

because there are many chapters of PRSSA and Ohio Northern University can

be a varied source of content as well.

Let’s say I was creating a post.

This is how I would incorporate hashtags:

#ONUPRSSA #ONU #Chicago

Instead of:

#ONUPRSSAFirmTripChicago

The focus should be on ONU first because our chapter is a representative and

extension of the university. PRSSA should be next because that is specifically

who we are in ONU. That is lengthy enough to say, so that would be one hashtag.

A second hashtag could be just a simple #ONU. When someone searches tags

that are #ONU, they will see a wide range of posts dealing with athletics,

admissions, the arts, and other campus organizations. When someone is looking

at what ONU is involved in, PRSSA will now be on their screen, which of course

gives the chapter more exposure.

Lastly, a third hashtag that could be used is #Chicago. It is more of a fun hashtag

and that is why it is last. It is also the least important in terms of brand exposure,

since there are just so many posts that tag Chicago.

One thing that I do not believe the book mentioned was the number of hashtags.

I would keep the number of hashtags used to be a handful at max, because too

many hashtags to look at is overwhelming for the reader.

Do you have any thoughts on the use of hashtags?