What is a Hashtag? And What Do You Do With Hashtags?

A little while back, someone named Dr. C commented here at Small Business Trends saying:  ”I’m still not sure how hashtags are being used, or how to use them, or when to use them, or what the significance is in using them… totally confused ….”  We hear you, Dr. C â€" hashtags are baffling to those who do not spend a lot of time online or who are new at social media.

So today we’re going to tackle the question “What is a hashtag?” in plain language.  We will also address the business significance of hashtags, and how hashtags can help you in marketing.

What is a Hashtag?

A hashtag is a label for content. It helps others who are interested in a certain topic, quickly find content on that same topic.

A hashtag looks something like this:  #MarathonBombings or #SmallBizQuote.

Hashtags are used mostly on social media sites.  They rocketed to fame on Twitter.  But now you can use hashtags on other social platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Google+.

Anyone sharing content on a relevant topic can add the hashtag label to their message.  Others searching for that topic, can search for that label to find other messages on that same social media platform.

For example, during the horrific Boston Marathon bombings in the spring of 2013, several hashtags were used. They proved invaluable for providing and following up-to-the-minute news about the bombings.  In fact, several big news stories in recent years have been amplified and added to with citizen reports and amateur video and photographs. Hashtags for such situations also provide a way for the public to express their sentiment  - something many of us feel compelled to do in the case of a disaster.  Hashtags are like an information lifeline that we cling to, to learn more about the event and to express our emotions.

Hashtags, however, are not limited to big news stories.  Small business marketers have also cracked the code and figured out inventive ways to use hashtags. We’ll discuss the marketing uses of hastags more below. But first, let’s talk about some nuts and bolts to understand hashtags better.

How To Create a Hashtag

Hashtags are simple things.  There are just a few technical requirements to know:

No Spaces Allowed

A hashtag can be a single word, an abbreviation, an invented combination of letters and numbers, or a phrase.  If it is a phrase, there can be no spaces between words.  All letters and numbers must run together without spaces in a hashtag.  You can’t have punctuation or symbols in your hashtag (other than the # symbol at the beginning).  Numbers are OK, but you must also have at least one letter with the numbers â€" hashtags cannot consist entirely of numbers.

Start With the # Symbol

A hashtag always starts with the symbol # followed directly by letters and sometimes numbers.  Fun factoid:  depending on where you are in the world, the symbol # is called various things.  In the United States and Canada, it is called a number sign or sometimes a pound sign.  But in other places, such as the United Kingdom and Ireland, that # symbol is called a hash sign.  So you see, that’s how these labels came to be called “hashtags.”  In essence, a hashtag is a label that consists of a word or phrase tagged with a hash symbol in front of it.

Create Your Own Hashtag 

Anyone can create a hashtag.  I’ve created numerous hashtags over the years.  You could create one of your own or several, if you wish.

All you do to create a hashtag is think it up.  Then start using it in your messages.

Usually you add it to the end of messages.  But you could add it anywhere in the message that makes sense, as long as it’s readable.

You are not required to register a hashtag anywhere. There are some hashtag directories around, but they unofficial, outdated and usually not worth the trouble.

Make Hashtags Unique

If you think you’ve invented a hashtag that’s completely new, do a search first on the social platform you intend to use it on.  We find that about 25% of the time, the hashtag we want to use is already being used for some other purpose.  Now, there’s no hashtag police.  So technically, there’s nothing stopping you from using a hashtag already in use. But doing so will cause confusion, or worse, be seen as an attempt to hijack a discussion just to gain attention.  If the hashtag is in use, it’s best to go back to the drawing board.

Don’t forget to check usernames, too.  Make sure your intended hashtag is not the same as an existing username on a social network.  Here again, it may cause confusion to use a hashtag such as #DellSMB if there is a user @DellSMB.  Besides, the user probably would interpret it as an attempt to hijack their brand name.  You could find yourself on the receiving end of a cease-and-desist letter, or with the social platform taking action for violating someone’s trademarked name.

Make Hashtags Easy to Remember and Understand

Keep hashtags as short as possible. That’s especially important for Twitter where you have a limited character count.  It’s best if a hashtag is an understandable word, phrase or abbreviation.

Hashtags that are long, hard to pronounce or hard to remember, will be hard for people to use, too.  You can’t go wrong with something short and easy to remember.

On Google+, you get an added benefit:  Google’s technology will automatically assign a hashtag to your content, without you doing anything.  You can tell it not to add the hashtag, if you prefer, so you can manually add your own hashtags.

How to Use a Hashtag That Already Exists

Rather than creating your own hashtag, sometimes you want to enter a discussion around a topic where a hashtag already exists. You would simply add that hashtag somewhere (usually at the end) of your Twitter tweet or other social media update.  By doing so, you are sharing your content related to that same topic.  By adding the hashtag to your content, you are saying “Hey, I want to chime in on this discussion.”  Others interested in that topic will see your content.

When Not to Use a Hashtag

Avoid hashtag pollution.  This is using multiple hashtags in a single message.  Any more than two hashtags in a message makes it difficult to read.

It’s considered bad etiquette to add a hashtag to an unrelated message just to get attention. Always make sure your content is relevant to the hashtag you use.  Otherwise, people may report you for being a spammer, or respond testily.

How to Use Hashtags for Your Small Business

There are as many ways to use hashtags for your business as creative people can think up.  Here are 7 ways small businesses use hashtags, either their own, or hashtags started by others â€" and most can be done on a very small budget or for free:

1. Market your business through holding a contest - You can hold a contest and use a hashtag to get people to enter your contest and gain followers on your Twitter account, too.  Be careful on Facebook, as Facebook has certain strict rules about running contests. But it’s easy on Twitter.  Here’s an example:

2. Network with people using #FollowFriday - The #FollowFriday (or #FF for short) hashtag is a simple way to network with others.  On Fridays, you give a shout out to people whose tweets you find helpful. This is a key way that followers get our attention, and we’re likely to follow them back.  Here’s an example:

3. Use a hashtag to hold a Twitter chat  -- Text chats are held on Twitter.  Since Twitter is just one big open platform, you have to have some way of designating who is participating in the chat.  Otherwise, you have no way of knowing whether a tweet is responding to something someone else said in the chat, or not. Enter the hashtag.  Assign a unique hashtag, everyone uses it, and voila â€" you are hosting a discussion, albeit a text discussion.  Don’t want to organize your own?  Then participate in a standing chat. Try #SmallBizChat on Wednesdays, from 8 to 9 pm Eastern time, with host Melinda Emerson.  Read: How to participate in a Twitter chat.

4. Attend a conference and connect with other attendees - Most conferences and business events these days have a dedicated hashtag assigned for the event.  An easy way to find out who else is there and connect with them in person, is to check the Twitter stream for the hashtag. See who tweets, and then send a direct message to that person, to set up a time to connect.

5. Find and share business content - You can find valuable business content through Twitter, by checking hashtags for topics such as #Marketing or #SmallBiz.  Want your content to spread further?  Use such hashtags when sharing your own content, and maximize who can see your content.  You can do something similar on other social platforms, such as Pinterest.  Let’s say you sell food products, such as your own line of BBQ sauces.  You could use the #BBQ hashtag on Pinterest to share photos of recipes using your product, and to connect with others who like BBQ.

6. Use hashtags for Awards nominations - For the Small Business Influencer Awards, we use the hashtag #SMBinfluencer.  It’s a way to develop energy and excitement around the Awards, and for us as the Award organizers to track discussion around it.  Nominees use it to see the discussion other nominees engage in and share with their communities.

7. Use Hashtags.org for competitive intelligence - See how others are using hastahgs. Hashtags.org is a services that aggregates hashtags, and tells you what people are discussing.  It’s bound to give you ideas.

And don’t forget to check out 5 more ways to use hashtags for your small business.

How do you use hashtags in your business?  Share your suggestions below.

Shutterstock images: Social, Candy. Facebook image via Facebook.

PayPal Offers 4 New Services for Business - But Will A Package Approach Work?

PayPal Business users now have the option of adding four popular Web-based services. Dubbed the Cash and Customer Management Package, the new services allow you to manage your business on a variety of levels.

Here are the added services available with the new PayPal package:

• Bill.com lets you automate bill approval, payment invoicing and collections. You can also create a three month cash flow projection and approve and pay bills securely from any device.
• Outright is a small business bookkeeping package acquired by GoDaddy in 2012.  It allows you to automatically import sales and expense data and organizing it into IRS-approved categories.
• Cloud Conversion is an add-on that allows you to use many of the customer relationship management features of Salesforce.com. This helps you gain better insight into your customers and why they make their purchasing decisions.
• Constant Contact lets you create professional looking marketing emails from a wide variety of templates. You can manage your contact list, make your emails more social and track success with an ongoing reporting feature. You can manage up to 5,000 contacts.

Currently there is a 30-day free trial of the new PayPal add-ons.  The full package is $90 a month after that and allows businesses to receive a single bill from PayPal for all the services, instead of different bills for each.  You can also use a single sign in.  And there is some integration between the apps, to automatically import data from one app to another.

PayPal also provides the option to purchase partial packages.  For example, if you just want the bookkeeping, you can get that at $8 per month (a 20% savings versus the Pro level of Outright, which is normally $9.99 per month).   If you want the Customer Management package, with access just to Constant Contact and Cloud Conversion CRM, you can get that package for $65.

PayPal says its packages in total are a 40 percent savings over paying for the services individually.

The question is:  how valuable will small businesses find the “package” approach?

Cloud services have brought real benefits to small businesses.  Cloud applications make it easy to get started and use a variety of backend services to improve your productivity and profitability.  Why struggle by doing a task by hand, when you can use technology to automate it and cut down manual effort?

However, there are now so many services that it has become a chore just to find them and evaluate them, let alone use them.  PayPal clams this will save you time in shopping for services, as well as making your operations more efficient and effective.

While each of the packaged PayPal new services are certainly high quality options and solid choices for small businesses, PayPal’s package approach seems like a limited piecemeal effort.  PayPal would be better served to create an “open” marketplace, with a variety of integrations.  As good as these four services may be, they won’t suit every business.  It seems like a constrained approach in today’s world of marketplaces and open platform choices.  Still, the savings could be a good deal.

Image: Paypal

Accountants: Your Customers Want You to Embrace Technology

In 1994, Bill Gates famously stated that banks were “dinosaurs.” This same description could easily be applied to the accounting industry today. For too long, many CPAs have been content to offer the traditional suite of accounting services: Tax preparation, audit assistance and occasional financial advice.

This is simply not enough. Small business customers demand (and deserve) more from one of their most trusted financial advisers.

Many accountants are reluctant to embrace new technologies due to fear of additional costs, a learning curve, the possibility that the new technology won’t work the way it’s supposed to and a diminished quality of service. These fears are valid. But with the popularity of DIY online tax preparation sites increasing every day, accountants that fail to embrace new technologies will soon go the way of the dinosaurs.

The Cloud

By now, you’ve all heard of The Cloud. It might sound like some nebulous technology that only IT firms really use - but it’s not.

The cloud simply refers to hosting programs on an integrated, Internet-based platform that is accessible from anywhere. With the cloud, you and your clients can access programs from any device: desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile.

The cloud will improve your workflow and keep your customers happy.

Online Marketing

Another way that accountants can utilize technology to boost sales is by connecting with their customers online.

If you don’t have a great website that explains your firm and how you can support small business owners, get one right now. Today’s business owners expect you to have an online presence. In fact, they might not trust you if you don’t.

Social media is a great free way to connect with your current and potential customers, announce new products and services and connect with potential partners.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

Keep track of your current and potential customers, electronically track and issue invoices, monitor production and instantly evaluate your business’ performance by utilizing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program.

Salesforce is the biggest name in this space, but there are dozens of different companies that provide this Web-based service.

Strategic Financial Technology Partnerships

As I mentioned earlier, CPAs need to improve and expand their service offerings in order to compete in today’s marketplace. One way to do this is to develop strategic referral partnerships with other players in the financial services industry - especially those that are leveraging emerging technologies.

As one of their most trusted financial advisers with an intimate knowledge of their business finances, it’s natural that your customers might come to you with questions about cash flow, how to pay a tax bill, managing payroll, major financial investments, etc. Though you might not have the interest or resources to provide those services, a partnership with a financial technology company that you can refer them to will improve your own credibility as a forward thinking and trustworthy financial partner.

The small business industry is rapidly changing. I believe that as things continue to change, it’s important that my fellow service providers embrace new technologies and partnerships in order to provide the best value possible for our small business customers.

Embrace Photo via Shutterstock

Learn How To Acquire New Businesses: Review of Successful Acquisitions

“I create nothing.  I own.” - Gordon Gekko, as played by Michael Douglas in the movie “Wall Street.”

Business acquisitions are announced in the Wall Street Journal almost everyday and are glamourized in movies such as Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.”  But most small business are not public. So most owners only have imagined what an acquisition process entails â€" or they just have cliched Gordon Gekko quotes to go on.

Successful Acquisitions: A Proven Plan for Strategic Growth by David Braun and published by AMACOM, looks to provide value details. I learned about the book through a Twitter connection, and requested a review copy.

Braun is a mergers and acquisitions expert with more than one billion dollars in transactions. He is the founder and CEO of Capstone Strategic, Inc.

His experience certainly informed the book’s topic in a lively manner. Not only does he know his subject matter inside and out, but he can communicate it in a way for business owners to understand.  He explains the nuances well enough for the reader to learn why certain steps are necessary.  This quote in the opening pages declares the value of review against a business growth decision:

“Because growth, especially external growth, turns our attention to opportunities in the world beyond our own operation, it’s easy to rush into action without an adequate review of where we are coming from.”

That experience plays well in explaining the possible perspectives from business leaders at the acquisition end of a bid.  Braun explains the art of the “no” in a due diligence effort:

“I have rarely found an owner who, when asked if he would consider selling his business, immediately says, “Yes, I want to sell, and I want to sell now.” If you did actually get an immediate yes, this might well indicate weakness on the part of the prospect….  You should embrace every rejection because if you listen carefully to the reasons, they can lead you to the hidden equation for which the owner will, in fact, sell.”

The book is divided into three main sections:

• Building a Foundation - discusses how you evaluate the merger concept.
• Building Relationships with People - helps you understand the right overtures that lead to negotiating with mutual respect.
• Building an Actual Deal - addresses the nuts and bolts of finance and legal details, such as what a letter of intent should provide.

Braun writes about the top 10 most common reasons to acquire a business.    His perspective on business acquisitions is certainly seasoned, providing a 360-degree view of the merits of acquiring other companies.  Take this reason:

“Stabilizing financials - Buying and incorporating a business with higher margins can bring stability to your balance sheet. When your business is impacted by cyclicality and seasonality, and a cash cow dies, the right acquisition lets you invest in a new breed.”

The third section, building an actual deal, includes some finance concepts such as weighted average cost of capital. I remember this formula from my finance courses in my MBA studies. Braun makes its value, as well as other terminology, plain to those who skipped business courses.  You don’t need an MBA to understand it.  Moreover, he mainly focuses on the kind of the soft skills that can make or break so many mergers and acquisitions â€"  more so than a finance model could or would.

If you have B2B sales or lead generation experience, the research advice will dovetail nicely into what you already know. You’ll know what Braun means when he writes that:

 ”Your success at this stage is contingent on your faith in the principle that every company is for sale for the right equation.”

But Braun stays above “Boiler Room” recommendations.  He remains grounded to the big picture that real businesses face in an acquisition.

With one read of his book, your chances to be equally grounded - and successful â€" in either doing successful acquisitions of other businesses or having your business be acquired, will increase.

If you have been  presented with third-party offers to buy your business, or you’re considering acquiring another business,  read this book.  It is not a do-it-yourself manual designed to qualify you to handle acquisitions on your own without skilled help.  But you will gain important background information and context. The more you know, the more you maximize your chances for successful acquisitions.