It’s clear there are several people who use social media for their business who still haven’t figured out the best way to leverage hashtags for the greater good. We’re against stuffing posts full of hashtag clouds in hopes of getting some traction on meaningless and far-reaching terms. It’s a spammy move and devalues the overall quality of content being delivered to users who interact and follow specific hashtags. And yet people still do it, not knowing it makes their brand appear irrelevant, and brings poor quality contributions to rich platforms.

One thing I find fascinating is when businesses hashtag their own business name or another business’s name over the more appropriate @ tag. It fascinates me especially when I try to put myself in the person’s shoes, try to figure out what they could’ve wanted to achieve by doing so. Why would a business want anyone to follow their #BusinessName over their actual profile or page? More appropriately, who exactly does the business think is so interested in following the hashtag feed of their #BusinessName when they could just scroll their actual profile or page? And wouldn’t the business want to @ another business to be fully connected to their profile, rather than a drop a meaningless #BusinessName? These questions rush to my mind each time. But then it dawns on me (as I began in this post), that it’s clear there are several people who use social media for business who still don’t understand how it works.

Ya see, hashtags work best when they are used for popular topics or terms, and especially when used in a relevant way. That’s what the people want. For example, a restaurant would hashtag a term like ‘Brunch’ way before they would their own ‘BusinessName’ because ‘Brunch’ is a very popular term in general and a huge interest in the world of people who eat out to restaurants. Folks who use their own #BusinessName should stop because it comes off as desperate, selfish, and inexperienced. Think of it. The person who hashtags their own #BusinessName is the only person following or paying attention to that hashtag…so if that’s you, stop it. Measure twice and cut once.

Now you know that hashtagging your own ‘BusinessName’ is one thing to avoid. When I do social media coaching for businesses, I cover core ‘dos-and-don’t’ topics like this, and give guidance to people who manage social media handles on a business’s behalf. Want or need more insight like this? Give me a call at 408.250.8066 and let’s chat about how I can help you.

Written by Carl Foisy