Page 64 - The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business - PDFDrive.com

curate along any interest you can imagine.

15. Learn to use hashtags effectively.
Hashtags are arguably the most important innovation in the history of social
media. The humble hashtag has become the index card system of the web. It’s
social media’s most important way to organize information, and it’s critical to
discovering trends, content, and ideas. Hashtags have crept into popular culture,
and brands now feature them on advertisements, TV shows, billboards, menus,
and even on the big screen at sporting events.

Following a hashtag also organizes people. The people following a hashtag
might be starting a company, leading a discussion that leads to innovation, or
planning the overthrow of a government. Hashtags are the cornerstone elements
for communicating everything from disaster relief to memes. They can also be
an important element in the Content Code equation. Research indicates that the
presence of a hashtag could increase social transmission by as much as 70
percent on some topics.

Here are some examples of hashtag campaigns that ignited ideas and
messages:18

Charmin: In 2013, toilet paper brand Charmin launched the Twitter
hashtag #tweetfromtheseat to take advantage of the staggering number of
people who use social media in the bathroom (40 percent of young adults—
and those are just the ones who admit it!). Keys to success included the use
of actionable language (the hashtag starts with a verb telling followers to do
something); it was fun and playful; and it was tied to a larger Super Bowl
promotion.
Make-A-Wish Foundation: A few years ago, the world fell in love with 5-
year-old cancer fighter Miles (aka “BatKid”) when he became a superhero
for a day. San Francisco became Gotham City thanks to the Greater Bay
Area Make-A-Wish Foundation and the help of 16,000 actors and
volunteers. Dressed in full Batman costume, BatKid saved the city from the
forces of evil while hundreds of thousands of people followed along on
social media with the hashtag #SFBatKid. The story blew up, generating an
estimated 1.7 billion social impressions across 117 countries. Celebrities
like Christian Bale, Ben Affleck, and Britney Spears used the #SFBatKid
hashtag. Even President Barack Obama gave Miles a six-second shoutout
on Vine. Make-A-Wish saw a huge boost in site traffic—as many as 1,400
hits per second during the peak of the campaign. The hashtag worked
because it promoted an emotional story, the event was meticulously