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Playing a Game of Industrial Marketing Hashtag

Taking a little time to find the right hashtag to use is well worth the time and effort.

While I’ve spent some effort convincing industrial manufacturers to get involved on Twitter (see herehere and here), I wanted to spend some time going a little deeper and sharing some information about how hashtags can help when it comes to industrial marketing.

Hashtags are commonplace on Twitter, and have more recently been incorporated into Facebook.

Kalie Moore provides a basic overview of what hashtags are and how B2B marketers can use them to their advantage at her blog over at Rivalfox.

What is a Hashtag
Hashtags are a way to label a conversation, by topic or targeting a group. All you do is use a pound sign and add your topic without spaces. When I tweet this blog post, I will use the hashtag ‘#B2B’ to allow B2B companies and marketers to find it more easily. Hashtags can also be deployed to convey irony and sarcasm.

Hashtags on Facebook and What it Means for B2B Marketers
The introduction of hashtags on Facebook just made online marketers jobs significantly easier. Before hashtags, a key way to create Facebook ads was based on what a user “liked.” Perhaps you have already targeted Facebook users who “liked” your competitor’s product. But “liking” a product is not the same as being actively engaged with a product. With hashtags, you will see who is actively engaged, and in a timely way. That is the group that your campaigns should target.

How to Use Hashtags for B2B Marketing
Most B2C marketers focus on using hashtags for brand awareness and active listening. As a B2B marketer, how can hashtags help you?

Hashtags allow B2B marketers to reach a larger and more precisely targeted audience. To start, do your homework. There are numerous services that allow you to track hashtag statistics, but I recommend that you start with hashtags.org. The free account will allow you to type in a hashtag, then shows you a 24-hour trend graph. If you upgrade your account, you can see all related hashtags and their respective statistics. You could see, for instance, whether #b2bmarketing or #contentmarketing gets more traffic, and then structure your hashtags strategically.

Simply put, using hashtags on social media helps you put a stamp on your post, allowing it to be searched for and found more easily.

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