#susanalbumparty … What did you first see when you read that hashtag? Did you see the hashtag in full, or did you pick up on the bum party bit? My guess is the latter and I’m sure you’re not the only one!

Susan Boyle’s marketing team were either very naive or total geniuses when using social media last week to help promote the new album from the former Britain’s Got Talent star. It wasn’t long before #susanalbumparty went viral and rightly so as it’s a classic example of how witty content can sometimes work in your favour and get your message out there… and fast!

It’s not the first time that misinterpretations on social have led to comments going viral. This reminds us of the old-school .com jokes, made out of ill-thought out domain names such as penisland.com (Pen Island, for the record).

These two examples aren’t the only ones either…

Based on the above, I thought it might be good to share some advice on the use of hashtags that Sentiment Metrics has picked up from around the inter-web!

As always, there is an etiquette to social media usage and this is no different. Here we look at some of the do’s and don’ts when using a hashtag on Twitter:

Do’s

• Hashtags provide a way of categorising tweets. For example, any tweets talking about social media or social media monitoring may have a hashtag #sm or #smm attached to it.
• They also emphasis the purpose of a tweet so if you are tweeting various messages on the same topic, be consistent.
• Productivity Strategies believe hashtags are an easy way to spread the word as they help broaden your social outreach.
• Additionally, hashtags, if used by enough people, can create topic trends.
• From this, you are able to follow specific hash tags of interest to you. This will allow you to connect with other social media users using the same hashtags as you, to build up relationships. You may find these people are useful contacts to have.
• When holding events, hashtags can prove valuable. For example, our MD recently attended a CIPRsm event where all participants were encouraged to use a particular hashtag when tweeting about the event. This makes it possible to monitor tweets, adding value to the experience.
• If you are using a social media monitoring tool, don’t forget to use known hashtags in search streams to maximise your results.

Don’ts

• There is no need to use a hashtag in every tweet you post.
• Some people post a tweet purely as a hashtag which defeats the point. Short hashtags are seen to be better than long ones which tend use up more of the commonly known 140 character limit associated with tweets.
• Don’t be careless when creating a hashtag.

These tips show that targeted use of hashtags can help drive a conversation around a topic or message and broaden its reach. But, make sure you think carefully before creating a hashtag which immediately becomes visible to the social world as it could be misinterpreted!