The Relevancy of The Modern Hashtag

Posted on Dec. 10, 2023  /  Research  /  Subscribe 0

As an up-and-comer in the PR industry, I have noticed much overlap between social media and PR. With other forms of marketing becoming outdated, digital marketing has become one of the most effective ways to get people to engage with your PR campaigns. Not only this but it can increase your organization’s visibility way faster and easier. 

One of the most successful social media platforms is TikTok. Though it has been around since 2016, it only began to gain traction in 2019. So much so, that the way this new generation thinks and experiences social media is a lot different than the previous generation. The new trend is now short videos and snip bits instead of photos. With that being said, you can only imagine why I and so many other people seem to be confused about whether hashtags are still relevant. But to understand the strategy on how to use hashtags to increase your visibility on social media, you must first understand the evolution of the hashtag. 

Hashtags Then VS. Now

Hashtags came onto the scene first on Twitter in 2007 by Chris Messina. You might be asking yourself where Chris got his inspiration from. He looked to both Jaiku and Flickr which were two very popular platforms at the time. During the California wildfires in 2007, Chris encouraged others to tag “sandiegofire” so that everyone who was talking about this topic, would be grouped together. 

People on Twitter expressed feeling frustrated with the algorithm because they only wanted to interact with certain types of people who had the same interests as them. From there, “tagging” or “hashtaging” blew up on Twitter because people started to notice that Chris’ strategy of organizing content, was fixing their initial frustration with the platform. As social media became more popular, hashtags started being used to hop on trends, movements, and viral challenges. In fact, hashtags were the conversation starters surrounding controversial topics, in the hope of inspiring some sort of social change. 

Organizations and brands started to see how powerful hashtags were becoming so they started to utilize this to their advantage. Hashtags allow brands to better relate and interact with their audiences. It also allowed companies to expand their overall reach.

The Purpose & Impact of the Hashtag

When done correctly, hashtags can optimize your content and help grow your audience. Hashtags are used not because they are “trendy” but because they can bring the right audience to your page. You want to build your brand and your community. To do this effectively you need to be consistent with your logo, colors, and messaging on all your platforms (that includes hashtags). Once you’ve got that down, then you can find your operating rhythm when it comes to putting out content. The goal is to have multiple posts a day on each platform, to build engagement with your audience. It is also important to do your research on the different social media platforms so you can tailor your hashtags and content to each social media page. What might work for you on Instagram might not work for you on Twitter. With that being said, let’s see what the most relevant topics are on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. 

Best Hashtags to Use for Public Relations Campaigns 

The idea is to stay away from broad hashtags and instead personalize your hashtags to your organization’s brand. This will help to distinguish your organization from other brands and will allow you to show your passion for what you love. However, if you aren’t too familiar with hashtags then it can feel daunting trying to come up with hashtags from scratch. By having a better understanding of what kinds of topics people are talking about within your niche, you can better understand how your organization fits within that community.

A good example of an organization that uses hashtags effectively is PR Girl Manifesto. This non-profit organization is constantly using hashtags to make their page more searchable and easier to access for PR pros. On Instagram, they use hashtags like: 

• #prgirlmanifesto 

• #pr 

• #pr101 

• #itsaprthang 

• #marketing 

• #prbae 

• #digitalmarketing 

• #communications 

• #nobasicpitches 

• #womeninmedia 

• #marketingexpert

You can see that out of this list, there are hashtags that are personalized to their specific organization’s brand. However, some hashtags are more broad with the intention for anyone in PR, marketing, and communications to be able to easily access their content when searching for topics within those industries. On Instagram, #pr has 49.9 thousand users who have used the same tag in their social media posts. This means that a lot of people are interested in the industry. To give you a better understanding #marketing has 79 million posts, #communications with 787 thousand, and #digitalmarketing with 32.5 million. It is important to do research like this to see what’s already trending in your community instead of trying to reinvent the entire wheel. 

Now let’s take a look at what's trending on TikTok when it comes to the PR industry. When searching up this topic on Tik Tok you see a lot of the next generation of PR pros talking about what it’s like working in the industry or how to break into the industry. Here are some examples: 

• #publicrelations has 234.8 million views

• #publicrelationstiktok has 21.7 million

• #publicrelationslifestyle has 17.9  thousand 

• #publicrelationstips has 1.4 million

If your organization is trying to gain traction on TikTok it’s best to either provide tips on how to get into the industry or how to become better at your craft, make lifestyle vlogs, or film a day in the life of a PR professional. Aesthetic content or helpful tricks in the industry are the kinds of videos that perform the best on that platform. With TikTok changing the way people use and think about social media, it is best to be ahead of the curve. It is also way easier for organizations/people to go viral on TikTok compared to any other platform. TikTok can increase your company’s visibility the fastest.

The Risk of Spammy Content

An organization should use only 3 or 4 hashtags in their posts. The more hashtags you have in one post, the more at risk your content is for looking spammy. There is a way to use hashtags that still comes off as professional and maintains your authority in your space. Use hashtags that are specific to your niche/community instead of using very broad hashtags. Broad hashtags just create noise and make it hard for your audience to find your content, which in turn can discredit you.

How do hashtags Align with Public Relations?

Though social media and public relations are different, they tend to overlap often. Public Relations is all about storytelling and how the public perceives your organization. Social media is a tool that is used to tell stories to the masses. Social media allows people/organizations to communicate with others nationally and around the world. David Olajide said it best in his blog The Benefits of Hashtags in PR, “ Social media strategies are integral to creating successful public relations campaigns. The importance of hashtags as a social media tool can make or break campaigns”. It’s also important to note that “hashtags perform best when you view them as enhancements to quality content rather than as a replacement”. Social media has been used as a tool for industries like marketing, advertising, and public relations. To not use this powerful tool to your advantage would be doing a disservice to your organization. The benefits of using this tool are starting discussions, engaging with your targeted audience, and improving search engine optimization. 

All in all, the hashtag is still very relevant in 2023. However, the way we use them has changed over time. Having an understanding of the purpose of the hashtags and when it’s appropriate to use them will elevate your content and increase your visibility online. The strategy behind hashtags is consistency, relevancy, and knowing the landscape/trends of each social media platform. 

By Samantha Cruz

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