Are Twitter Hashtags Useless?

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April 25, 2009 in Business Development

They seem to think so over at HubSpot: Why Twitter Hashtags and Trending Topics Are Useless to Marketers by Dan Zarrella:

Why Hashtags Are Useless

Many marketers think of hashtags first when they think about “going viral” on Twitter.

A hashtag is a word or string of characters that starts with a number sign [like #tcot or #gtd, Ed.]. When a hashtag appears in a tweet, it links that word to its Twitter Search results page.

That’s initially pretty appealing from a marketing perspective, but there’s a problem: Twitter Search doesn’t explain what the hashtag means.

Unless you’re already involved in the conversation, the Twitter search results page is usually useless — so useless that you often see Twitterers asking “What the heck is #suchandsuch? And why is it a trending topic?”

There are a couple of ways to read this, and a comment by Christopher Drinkut gets right to it:

” hashtags are pointless,” Oh really?

Look, I’m not in love with hastags – I really could care less – but to say they are pointless, that’s insane.

1. One reason they are not pointless is that people use them. If you want to talk about the culture of a community hashtags matter.

2. If your logic is – “hashtags are pointless because I can’t leverage them for my own marketing” – you need to reevaluate. Marketing in the future (and today) requires a lot more consideration of the marketed to.

3. Why am I even writing all of this? …So it’s not something you are going to use – I wouldn’t necessarily call it pointless.

hashtags are pointless because I can’t leverage them for my own marketing

I believe that this statement is the sum of the argument that Dan Zarrella is making. Unfortunately Zarella is missing the point of the hashtags – creating a link to a set of related tweets by people who may or may not be following each other. This makes the hashtag a fantastic resource for marketers doing research on a topic or product. Take a look at “#Quiznos” for example, quite a bit of conversation where people are taking the time to tag their tweets with that particular hashtag.

If I worked for Quiznos I would be keeping an eye on that search stream and using that list of customers to make something happen. Like following those folks, for one thing. And doing a little more digging into this tweet for another:

What kind of marketer could resist knowing about what came before and after this tweet? And you can just go ask him. Useless?

Did You Etsy Today?

And then we have this from the WSJ on Friday, 24 April:

How #etsyday Grew on Twitter

Image: schugirl08 via Flickr

Internet companies shell out millions to build buzz by buying keywords on Google or (back in the day) placing weird 30-second ads during the Superbowl. On Friday, e-commerce site Etsy.com – the eBay of handmade crafts – got a huge dose of buzz for free.

For much of the day, #etsyday has been the top-trending topic on Twitter, the social short-messaging juggernaut. The mysterious term refers to a day to celebrate the online store Etsy.

Etsy spokesman Adam Brown says his company had little to do with it. The idea for Etsyday came from Susan Schumann, a 37-year-old teacher and photographer in Newport, Rhode Island. She started selling prints of photos from her Peru vacation on the site in February, but was surprised that many of her friends hadn’t heard of the site. So she posted a message on Etsy’s user message boards suggesting that the community of users do some grassroots marketing of their own.

As of this writing it is too soon to tell what impact this may have had on sales at Etsy.com, but judging from tweets and comments on the blog, it has people pretty excited:

and:

“Endless Possibilities in Vinyl Lettering Design”?? How about endless possibilities in cross-linking and free promotion?
Keep in mind that you simply cannot buy that kind of excitement. And it’s all because of a “useless” little hashtag.

What say you? Leave a comment.

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Tags: blogging, business tactics, Conversations, etsy, marketing, real-world examples, Twitter

9 Comments »

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http://blogforprofit.com Grant Griffiths

Hashtags are far from useless. Speaking from my own experience, this last week we used a hashtag to follow a live conversation taking place during a webinar I was involved with.

Can they be used for marketing? Short answer yes. And why not? Once again, I go back to the webinar from this last week. The ability to follow a live conversation during a live event is certainly marketing. To day they are not still useful is short sighted and self serving.
http://www.thejimgaudet.com/ Jim Gaudet

Currently I have no “real” use for hashtags, but I do see that they can be useful. To say they are not useful, I think would be incorrect.
http://talesfromthe.net/jon jon

I’m with you. Dan seems to have a very limited view of what’s “useful” and is way too hung up on follower count at the expense of conversation. I mean, how canyou possibly write an article about marketing and hashtags and not mention “#skittles”.

Interestingly, his advice to use “@hubspot” instead of “#hubspot” mirrors @WeFollow’s approach, preferring a power relationship instead of the more democratic conversation on a hashtag.

jon
http://www.unitychurchmarketing.com John Panico

Hastags are useful to me in a couple of ways. The number of topics and conversations that you can have is really infiinite. Put that in conjunction with the number of followers you have and tracking them can be quite the challenge. So hashtags help manage that.

In addition, hashtags let you participate in part of the community and can include you in a trend that may be truly going viral. When Battlestar Gallactica was still running earlier this year, I would check #BSG often to see how others were thinking and join the conversation.

You are correct in that sometimes you may not know what the hashtag means, although there is a sight that will tell you , but then again that is part of the attraction. Because people do ask about them, they can get people involved in the conversation who might not have joined otherwise.

Some hashtags are just fun. For example, I really enjoy #FollowFriday and love the story behind how it came about. The same can happen for anyone.

Currently, I check out the following hashtags regularly:

#HAHD
#Powerblogs

And I have wanted to create a hashtag for something not for profit that I would like to see go viral that would connect people.

So, I definitely see hashtags as being useful. at least to be they are.

Thanks for including me Comrade!
http://corporatedollar.org John Haydon

Stephen,

When I read this post from Hubspot the other day, I was like, “Isn’t it a little early to make any conclusions about Twitter’s marketing value?”

I see #Hashtags as “conversation aggregaters”. Marketing folks should think about the strategic role of conversations when they think of hashtags.

Jon also made an interesting observation: “preferring a power relationship instead of the more democratic conversation.”

Thanks for the brain food, Stephen!

John
@Stephen

Thanks for your comments, folks. I believe that hashtags are very useful, in fact, I am not sure that their full capabilities have been realized.
http://corporatedollar.org John Haydon

Stephen,

I noticed a Twitter search string that you, @lizstrauss, @geekmommy and others were involved in using #smgps.

What I liked about it:

1. Posts were numbered so that a stranger can follow the bigger conversation much easier.

2. Each post could completely stand on its own. That way strangers could also derive value just from one tweet.

I was thinking about your post during the day and I concluded that what limits marketing is never technology, but always creativity.

See you Friday!

John
Pingback: Why Hubspot’s Conclusion About Twitter Is Useless
http://blog.hubspot.com Mike Volpe – HubSpot

I don’t think anyone at HubSpot would dispute the value of hashtags as a listening tool. I don’t, and I frequently use them especially when I am at events. Dan was trying to say that make in his article is that hashtags are not useful for expanding reach on Twitter – we have found that by using @HubSpot rather than #hubspot we tend to get better results.

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