What Facebook Hashtags Will Mean For Social Marketers

Now that Facebook made it official that hashtags will be used in its ecosystem, social marketers are now rethinking their business strategies to take advantage of this novel development in Facebook.

Obviously, the addition of hashtags in Facebook is still not felt by most Facebook users. In fact, only a minority of people are now using Facebook hashtags. So this means that social marketers will have enough time to regroup and see how they can make the most out of hashtags.

While there are still other things that we must know about hashtags in Facebook, only time will reveal what is waiting beyond the horizon. There are obvious reasons that social marketers should sweat on their seat and get back to the planning board. The race is on of who will be the first marketers to take advantage of Facebook hashtag.

If you’re one of the social marketers out there who use different types of social networking platforms, you might already have an idea what a hashtag is and how it is used.

This is fairly a good start to conceptualize new strategies in terms of the Facebook hashtags. As a head start, read the following implications of hashtag in Facebook on social marketers.

#1 Brands can track their internet marketing strategies

Since hashtags will group particular conversations, marketers will be able to see how their brands are doing. They will have an idea about how many times their brands are mentioned and how does their brands affect their consumers.

Of course, most Facebook users are still more interested with status updates and they will most likely make their conversation private. But this might change as more and more people are getting acquainted with Facebook hashtags.

#2 Hashtags magnifies marketing efforts

Social marketers are already exerting efforts to market their brands through creating fan pages, sponsoring Facebook events, paid ads, constant and regular updates, and many others.

Because of this, there is no denying that hashtags will magnify all these efforts. Hashtags will further increase the visibility of these efforts to a more active and engaged community.

#3 Hashtags allow marketing across different platforms easier

Hashtags are originally popularized by Twitter and deemed to be the greatest strength of the social media website.

Because of its usefulness, other websites start to adapt the # signs. Even if the # sign really does not work in Facebook (previously), Instagram, Pinterest and others, it’s being mentioned many times. The # sign is not even limited to the Internet only but also in TV, magazines, newspapers, and other printed media.

Thus, with the addition of hashtags in Facebook, you can extend your reach from Twitter. If you post something in Twitter with hashtags and your Twitter is linked in Facebook, then that hashtagged post will already be functional in Facebook.

#4 Facebook is more popular than Twitter

While you already have a good number of audiences in Twitter, the potential is bigger when you work in Facebook.

With the addition of hashtags in Facebook, it’s very obvious for social marketers that they can further immerse their marketing strategies in a more number of people and a more engaged audience. It is quality and quantity combined.

#5 Facebook hashtags may be dominated with business-motivated posts

One of the differences between Twitter and Facebook is that the former is more public-oriented while in Facebook most users want to keep their accounts as private as possible.

So when it comes to Facebook hashtags – if various brands will not curtail their aggressive marketing strategies – most hashtags may become dominated by business companies and not by users – decreasing the quality of hashtags.

#6 Greater potential for brands to reach more people

Before hashtags is introduced, brands are only able to promote their selves through fan pages and tags only. But with the addition of hashtags, the world of social marketers exponentially expanded.

They can be tagged in thousands or even millions of posts and conversations. They’ll not only track their progress but they can also influence or engage potential and real customers in real time.

#7 Challenging hashtag management

Since there’s a potential for millions of conversations that will go on at the same time, it will be tough for social marketers to attend or respond to all of these conversations.

This might hurt the image of a brand as they’re seen to lack concern and interests for their clients. Furthermore, the hashtag is considered to be an additional workload for social media managers and may mean for additional expenses.

#8 Brand pages become less prominent

Though it’s too early to conclude, the brand pages in Facebook is predicted to pale down because people will be diverted to hashtags.

This is a big issue for companies who have invested great amount of money to build their brand page and all of a sudden, because of the hashtag, it will become insignificant.

These are some of the things that social marketers should keep in mind. In the surface, hashtags are really for Facebook citizens but it can easily be taken advantages by for-profit organizations.

In the flip side, while hashtags can be very effective tool for marketing strategies, it can also damage a brand’s reputation if used in the wrong way. For example, overly saturated hashtags with brand names can easily fend off people and even send a bad image for hashtags.

This will result to negative perception of hashtag which will decrease its users. As a technique, sometimes it will be helpful to use hashtags that will describe your brand instead of using your brand name itself.

With these in mind, it is clear that Facebook CEO Zuckerberg is taking a lot of necessary risks to further take Facebook to the next level. Though people might assume that Facebook is at its prime years, the CEO does not consider this as a reason to be complacent.

Interestingly enough, Facebook said that hashtag is the only start of bigger things to come. With this statement, we can predict that Facebook has more things hidden under its sleeves. What it is, we still do not know and we have to wait for the next big things.