3 Ways to Leverage Hashtags to Enhance Your Brand

Hashtags are so pervasive these days, Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon spoof them on TV. Companies now integrate hashtags into commercials, window displays and websites. Consumers use hashtags on Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter to filter their results and share their #TBTs (or Throwback Thursday photos).

The reason for their popularity? Hashtags allow you to find timely content online in real time. When you search a specific hashtag, you find recent, if not instant, results. These results can be refreshed and updated minute by minute. This is quite different from using keyword terms on a search engine and finding an article that could be several years old.

Also, for companies and their owners, hashtags allow you to track what’s being said about your industry and your business. 

Social Media Marketing; What's the point?

Advertisers lost control of the media years ago when the internet gave all the target audiences the power to run their own message delivery systems.

I’m not sure we had fully recovered from that peaceful revolution when another gigantic wave hit us, then another and another: Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, blogs, Yelp, Foursquare, and on and on.

Social Media Tips from the World’s Top Airline

On a recent flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a personal response from the airline when I posted details of my trip on Twitter. I say “pleasantly surprised” because many brands rarely interact with their followers on social media. I noticed that Cathay Pacific was different, engaging with nearly everyone who used @cathaypacific in their posts. I decided to test the airline’s social media team. I requested an interview with the head of social media. By the end of the day I was having an email exchange with Dennis Owen, the group manager for social media at Cathay Pacific Airways. Again, a timely response that I rarely get with many “thought leaders” or brands.

Social Media: Marketing's New Frontier

Technology has drastically changed the way we interact. It has made communication easy, simple and faster. The explosion of mobile technology and availability of internet access in fusion with social networks and media has ensured that communication no longer remain in the traditional formats. Marketers all over the world are making good use of this development to their advantage.

Marketing on social networks is relatively cheaper than traditional marketing. Social media basically represents low-cost tools that are used to combine technology and social interaction with the use of words, graphics, sound and videos. These tools are typically internet or mobile- based. Examples are Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram, you name them.