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December 2014

4x3 Ideas

December 24, 2014

Seasons Tweetings! Some Good Holiday Tweets From Brands

What makes a good marketing message on Twitter during the holiday season? Like any marketing effort, it's important to be mindful of public sentiment and simple good taste when promoting yourself on Twitter. 

More than at, say, Halloween, when almost anything goes as far as jokes and parodies related to the holiday, you need to be more careful with Christmas, Hanukkah and the other midwinter festivals. 

That does’t mean you can’t have a little fun, though. 

Gentleman's Playbook

This tweet from Gentleman’s Playbook speaks to a seasonal issue for the classy guy:  

Unilever gets crafty

Unilever offers a clever way to repurpose old sweaters to create a new holiday gift. What do you think they assume about how their audience views themselves? 

Target stays in the present

Few people will quarrel with Target’s successful effort to make consumerism cute:

WWE's Christmas smackdown

Be mindful of what works for your audience—without causing any residual damage to your brand by offending others on the social network. The WWE does a good job of this…

My true love gave... a latte

Finally, the wonderful Wawa. Anyone crave a latte?

Hope you enjoyed these tweets — and happy holidays from all of us here at 4x3!

Related Projects:
Brandywine Drumlabels Branding, Brandywine Drumlabels Website, Brandywine Primelabels Branding, Brandywine Primelabels Website
Tags:
Twitter, Happy Holidays

4x3 Ideas

December 2, 2014

The Fickle Hashtag: Best Practices for Use

The hashtag — what we used to call a pound sign — is the trickster of the social media world. It’s supposed to bring order to chaos by providing a handy way for people to connect on a particular theme or subject, and it does—most of the time. But the hashtag can also unexpectedly be a source of chaos and confusion. 

Consider the famous (and famously amusing) instances of marketers losing control of their hashtags, such as the notorious #McDStories. What started as a tasty campaign for the fast food company quickly turned sour as their promoted hashtag inspired a bunch of snarky (and sometimes gross) tweets. 

Most hashtag problems, of course, are not this dramatic. We experienced a more common hashtag issue during the ACRC Bowl Series, a rugby sporting event produced by 4x3’s sister company Sevens Sports. We created and promoted an “official” hashtag for the event, #ACRC15s, which was used on the website, social media and in the event program. This did not prevent some people from creating their own, however.

A post-event analysis shows that in addition to #ACRC15s (the most commonly used hashtag), #ACRC was occasionally used. A fair number of attendees also tweeted under #ACRCBowlSeries. 

Some hashtag best practices are suggested by how things played out on social media that weekend.

Hashtag best practices

  • Be consistent! If you use more than one hashtag, others will too.
  • Make it intuitive. The ideal hashtag is short but descriptive. 
  • Don’t be too generic—it’s a good thing we did not choose “ACRC” as our official hashtag, as there are a bunch of unrelated tweets using this handle. 
  • Promote the hashtag wherever you can. Announce the hashtag at the event if you have a message board or PA system, and include on signs and banners. Not only does this encourage everyone to use the same hashtag, it reminds them to post about the event generally. 
  • Check for “rogue” hashtags and direct social media users towards yours. For instance, we could have sent a friendly tweet like: “Love the #ACRCBowlSeries tweets! Use the official #ACRC15s hashtag to get even more people to see and share your posts!” 
  • If despite your efforts, a ton of people are using an alternate version, start using both.
Related Projects:
URugby Website
Tags:
Twitter, Rugby, Tips for Business