The Twitter bird is a very effective content marketing tool. In fact, it has even been helpful in running campaigns, social causes, movements and a lot more successfully. Part of the credit for this kind of success via a social media platform has to be given to the concept of #hashtags.
A lot of brands are using hashtags to successfully place themselves in the top trending news on Twitter. Moreover, these hashtags help to streamline the tweets centered around one topic, such that the user can get to see all of them at one place, by easily scrolling down. Recently, even Facebook has adopted this policy.
Successful hashtag campaigns are ones that don’t just spread awareness or popularity on something, but actually fulfill their purpose. In case of a brand, it might mean new clients or business. And in case of a controversy, it might mean public opinion being taken into consideration to get to a conclusion.
Here are three very famous Twitter hashtag campaigns to compete with and learn from, if you too are planning to start something like this:
1. Domino’s Pizza UK #letsdolunch
This was a very interesting campaign where the pizzeria decided to slash down the price of their Pepperoni Passion Pizza by one pence, whenever someone retweeted the hashtag #letsdolunch. Within two hours, the price came down to a little less than half, i.e. from £15.99 to £7.74. The pizza was then sold at the discounted price for three hours that day. A similar campaign was also run in Ireland, and saw great success.
The greatest thing to learn from this campaign – motivate people by offering something useful and lucrative to them. In this case, something tempting too!
2. The White House #40dollars
Now here is a campaign that was successful because of the fact that the issue concerned the masses. When the payroll tax cut was about to expire, and most working families were to face a drop of $40 per paycheck, President Obama’s team came on Twitter, seeking replies of people on what 40 dollars mean to them. When the campaign was revived in February 2012, it gathered enough public support to help lock in the cuts for the rest of the year.
Moral of the story – keeping people’s issues and concerns on priority, even during controversial and tough times gives good results. Brands shouldn’t be scared of that.
3. Ben & Jerry’s #fairtweets
On World Fair Trade Day, Ben & Jerry’s came up with a campaign where they urged users to tweet in less than 140 characters. The leftover or remaining unused characters were used by the brand to create a plug for #fairtweets. This made the campaign very unique and innovative.
Lesson learnt – new ideas attract users, and innovative campaigns make the process of awareness a lot of fun, thereby making them successful.
So, the next time you are starting with a hashtag campaign, do keep all these pointers in mind.