Our social intern and PR degree student, Hannah Marshall, says Don’t Make A Hash of Your Hashtags… sound advice.
An established cosmetics brand seriously upset the Twitter apple cart this week by joining in on what could be considered to be a derogatory hashtag.
One of the first things I was informed about at university was the importance of online reputation management. Up until then Twitter was a place to air my internal dialogue and joke around with friends. Oh, but little did I know the power of a tweet and how damaging it can be to a brand’s reputation.
After joining in with a trending hashtag about weight, this particular brand suffered a backlash of tweets from unhappy consumers. Having seen this and other examples, it’s apparent to me in my limited experience that, however experienced the person in charge of the account is, they should ALWAYS have a clear strategy and bounce their ideas off the wider team. Perhaps then someone might have shouted up “don’t do it!”.
I think getting the right balance of informality and fun on social is important, but knowing your audience is the key to knowing which trends, hastags and conversations to engage in.
Here are some examples of brands misjudging their hashtags and some wise, wise learnings…