From its humble beginnings, when an early user suggested this way to categorise Twitter conversations, the hashtag is now an established part of everyday conversation, both on and off Twitter.
Last week’s Super Bowl is perhaps the best indicator of the hashtag’s meteoric growth. In 2011 Audi stood out by being the first and only brand, at the time, to use a hashtag in its Super Bowl ad. This past Sunday – four years on – 50 per cent of Super Bowl ads featured hashtags.
This growth suggests that the benefits of using hashtags – to centralise and encourage conversation – are well established. But while hashtags can now been seen as an established output of the planning and creative process, their benefits as an input to that process have been less discussed.
This is because as well as being an excellent summary of an idea when a campaign goes live, hashtag thinking – asking, “what’s our hashtag?” regularly throughout the planning and creative process – can help to create better ideas.
Hashtag Thinking: Five reasons to use hashtags within a marketing campaign
