#HashtagIt

In their book, "The Art of Social Media," Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick focus a lot of energy on promoting your brand as a company with the help of social media. They also touch on some important skills for promoting an event that your company or organization is putting on.

Guy and Peg tell us that in order to be successful when hosting an event, it is necessary to have an effective hashtag.

The hashtag should be short, simple, and should be directly related to the event that it is describing. A hashtag such as #ONUPartnersConference2017 is far too long and too specific. Instead, something like #ONUPartners is generic so it will be used for a longer time.

That example came straight from last years Ohio Northern University's  Public Relations Student Society of America Partners Conference. As I was in attendance, and a participant in using the hashtag, I can say that using the generic short hashtag was effective.

At the conference last year, ONU Public Relations Student Society of America did a fantastic job pushing the hashtag. At the beginning of the event, an announcement was made for everyone use the hashtag when mentioning the conference on social media. This is another point that Guy and Peg made in their book, "The Art of Social Media." If you ask people to use the hashtag, it is more likely to be spread around social media. In turn generating more publicity for the event.

ONU PRSSA as well incorporated the hashtag into all forms of media during the conference. Even the itinerary for the day had the hashtag listed. Guy and Peg would be happy with that. They say it is important to incorporate the hashtag into everything during the course of the event.

A Hashtag can take a great event and make it something that can reach much more than the people attending. After seeing this skill put in use at the ONU Partners Conference last year, I would say that Guy and Peg know what they are talking about when it comes to promoting an event.

Here is the complete Storify from last years ONU Partners Conference: