Tag Archives: hashtag

Engaging Instagram for business campaign

Gastro pub The Tivoli in Cheltenham have come up with an engaging Social Media campaign using Instagram. The idea is for diners to take photos of their meals with Instagram and tag them with #TheTivoliMenu. Once The Tivoli have built a collection, they’ll create a special Instagram menu using the photos.

Visual menus are becoming an increasingly popular way of encouraging diners to make their food and drinks choices so this campaign is very much on trend. The campaign is a simple but engaging idea nicely promoted with cards around the pub which also mention their Facebook Page and Twitter profile.

If you need help with setting up a Social Media campaign to promote your business, give me a call on 01242 639023 to arrange a face to face meeting or book a phone call with me.

#TrumpetTuesday hashtag campaign

The #TrumpetTuesday hashtag campaign was started on Tuesday 8 April with the aim of promoting quality businesses. The idea is to tag a business, give a reason why you are recommending them and add the hashtag. The campaign runs every Tuesday on Twitter and Google+ and gives consumers and business people the opportunity to shout about good service or quality products and services they’ve enjoyed. The outcomes should be greater awareness and more sales for businesses and an increased number of satisfied customers.

From 9am-5pm on launch day on Twitter, #TrumpetTuesday was mentioned in 109 tweets by 57 people and there were a total of 49 retweets. 75,915 accounts were reached, meaning that if you tweeted or were recommended your tweet could potentially have been seen by over 75,000 people. In fact, the number of times #TrumpetTuesday tweets could have been seen was 16,203, so there’s a fair chance close to 75,000 people would have seen at the hashtag.

If you’d like to get involved go to Twitter or Google+ then:

1) Mention/tag a business
2) Give a reason why you are recommending them
3) Use #TrumpetTuesday

Have you received any leads or done any business as a result of #TrumpetTuesday? If so, I’d love to hear from you.

If you’d like help on raising awareness for your business, organisation or charity using hashtags on Twitter or Google+ please book a call or email me.

Examples of poor use of Twitter hashtags

There are several ways to misuse hashtags which can result in irritation for your followers or in your hashtag simply failing to work. Using multiple hashtags within a tweet and hashtagging words like #the and #and fall under the irritation heading. It’s the Twitter equivalent of email spam and smacks of the need for attention. Here’s an example of both in the same tweet from @thealexxmusic - 40,000 followers.

All day long, studio for my fans. #workhard #in #the #studio #sony #records #Alexx instagr.am/p/V087PEHqi1/

— ALEXX(@thealexxmusic) February 17, 2013

If you create a space within a hashtag by using an apostrophe that breaks it. A hashtag needs to be a single word or a single group of words.

@example gloves are for girls #realmendon‘tweargloves

— Beverley Jones (@jones_bev) February 2, 2013

To learn how to engage your community and build followers read 5 tips on how to wow with hashtags and read about Gü Puds Valentine’s Day competition.

To learn more about hastags and every aspect of Twitter for business check out my regular Cheltenham Twitter workshops.

Gü Puds knows the way to heart of its community

I’ve flagged up Gü Puds before - read here and here - as being a brand that really knows how to engage their community on Facebook and Twitter. With their latest Valentine’s competition they combine the two social networks with great effect. Followers on Twitter had a chance to win Gü Puds for a year by tweeting “I want to win a year’s supply of @gupuds for two because #ilovegu” plus a photo of Gü.

I want to win a year’s supply of @gupuds for two because #ilovegu saving these for valentines, #takes effort twitter.com/niamhini/statu…

— Niamh Donlon (@niamhini) February 13, 2013

The Twitter hashtag competition was supported on Gü Puds Facebook Page with posts about the competition raising awareness and creating engagement in their own right.

Competitions that link into national events work well and as people’s awareness of Valentine’s Day would already be heightened and with this social media competition there’s a natural link between the event and Gü desserts.

Twitter hashtag competitions or draws are easy to setup and are cheap (or even free) to run. Paid advertising is not required although it could be used to boost awareness of a campaign even further. This competition was an effective way to raise awareness of Gü Puds and it’s a model that could be followed be pretty much any other business.

To learn more about how you can use Twitter to raise awareness of your business check out my regular Twitter training in Cheltenham, including Advanced Twitter for business workshops.