Hashtags seem to be everywhere these days. No longer just used on social media to sum up a user’s feeling or the content of a post, hashtags have evolved. They are now used to promote TV shows, disseminate news, increase transparency in some governments, or even overthrow them.

Often, the problem with hashtags isn’t the tags themselves, but how people use them: Or rather, abuse them. Hashtags are actually a metadata tag that helps to group messages together. It is often used as a search function, and it’s particularly useful when combing through large volumes of information (say, a Twitter feed).

As digital marketers, it’s essential to learn how to effectively use hashtags. What else should you avoid?

Stop Carpet-bombing

As DAM’s Alan K’necht points out, . Carpet-bombing is generally worse. Carpet-bombing is the term used when a large number of tags are applied arbitrarily to a post.

For instance, this is a post that appeared recently on a social platform:

In my opinon, the first two hashtags are appropriate, succinct and somewhat useful to other users. They aren’t the problem. The problem IS that there are a total of 29 hashtags on this post, and most of them aren’t particularly useful for search parameters or trending. And that’s not to mention the lack of usefulness of so many tags, or the fact it’s not easy to read.

Am I opposed to a larger amount of tags in a post? Not necessarily. Sometimes, if the post or blog entry covers a lot of information, it’s understandable that you’d need more than a couple of hashtags. But if there’s five times as many hashtags as words in your post, you might want to reconsider your method for a few reasons. Incessant hashtag carpetbombings make it impossible to read or appreciate, and often leads to abandonment of the page or profile. Keep this in mind when determining your marketing approach and methods of promotion.

Piggybacking on trending hashtags is precarious. And tacky.

Remember this?

In one post, Kenneth Cole managed trivialize a serious political situation in Egypt, while simultaneously alienating its target audience and causing serious damage to its brand. Who wants to support a brand that disregards an entire nation’s struggle in order to shift a couple thousand suits? How your organization interacts on social platforms is often part of what potential customers consider when looking at brands. It’s no longer just about the clothes; it’s about the brand, the attitude, and the acceptability. But after this post, supporting KC became taboo, especially after the media starting covering the story. No company or organization will garner support for abjectly stupid marketing decisions, because no one wants to be associated with it. Another challenge of digital marketing: it’s there forever – so think carefully about what you publish.

Capitalization and grammar matter

Alan K’necht has also mentioned the importance of capitalization in multi-worded hashtags in a . The example used in his blog entry, #nowthatcherisdead, is ideal for demonstration how proper capitalization can be the difference between celebrating the life of a politician or a showgirl.

Ricky Gervais said it best:

I love this example for several reasons. The distinction between the two options is exceedingly clear, but it’s done in a straightforward, non-confrontational and comical manner. Not only did he make the distinction, but the considerable amount of interaction the post drew is what’s most valuable: people responded in droves.

Another, more serious marketing failure would be Susan Boyle’s album launch. Her marketing team started a hashtag trend about Susan’s album party. Sadly, due to a lack of capitalization within the hashtag, it did not go as well as planned. Instead of #SusanAlbumParty, it became:

True, it did receive a lot of attention, but for all the wrong reasons. Although you could argue that it was a brilliant PR move (it was one of the most retweeted hashtags in November 2012), it’s hard to believe any seasoned PR professional would knowingly promote a tag like this. More importantly, there is no data to support the idea that this PR coup was responsible for an increase in album sales.

Despite a few hiccups, hashtags can be an essential element to a digital marketing plan. Their versatility over 17 social media platforms, trending/search abilities and quantifiability make it a metric that has value to both users and brand managers. When used correctly, it can engage users. Being mindful of user behaviour and values will bring a better return on investment. When used incorrectly, it can alienate the brand and drive traffic away. Carpet bombing, ignoring capitalization and trend piggybacking are three easy mistakes to avoid. Although Social Media is a relatively new discipline, it’s clearly a worthy investment. Ensure its ROI by doing it properly.

is a small business located in British Columbia, Canada. Run by a small team, they specialize in water features, lawn care, Permaculture and total garden transformations. Like many other small businesses, the owners wear a lot of hats but can’t specialize in every element of business. It’s clear that these are talented, hardworking people who just need a little help in a few areas: this includes SEO and online marketing, which is where the DAM team comes in. Today we’re going to look at their site, and give some recommendations to give this company the site it deserves.

Titles

The first impression you get when you arrive at the site is bright: vibrant green backgrounds and a large, clear logo. However, it’s immediately clear that there are some technical issues: the pages titles are missing half of their copy. It currently reads: “| Ladysmith – Cedar – Nanaimo – Lantzville – Nanoose Bay” – but doesn’t list the company name or services. This is extremely important for keyword searches; by not including these essential terms in your Title, you are missing the opportunity for search engines to find your business.

Some alternatives that would help this site index better:

“Progressive Landscapes | Elegant Landscape Solutions for SE Vancouver Island”
“Lawn care, structures, water features and Permaculture in SE Vancouver Island | Progressive Landscapes”
“Progressive Landscapes | Landscaping in Nanaimo, Ladysmith, Cedar, Nanoose Bay and Lantzville, BC”
“Total Landscape Makeovers in SE Vancouver Island, BC |Progressive Landscapes”

Text

The site itself is actually quite light in terms of text. As I’ve suggested in the Images section below, I would take opportunities presented in many of the sections to write some copy to provide context and value to the client, while providing copy that can be indexed by search engines.

Links

The site lacks links – either to other pages in the site or to other external sites. There are plenty of opportunities on this site to integrate organic links. For instance, the Services’ Lawn Care section lists a service known as ‘de-thatching’. Later in my exploration of the site’s Blog, I found an entry explaining what de-thatching is, and its importance in healthy lawn management. That context made the value of their services much more understandable to consumers – but the Services section didn’t have a link to it! I would recommend that the owners create organic links within their copy to help educate and inform their clients.

Navigation bar

The navigation bar is basic and mainly effective: it consists of Home, About Us, Services, Portfolio, Testimonials, Blog and Contact Us.
With most sites, I always suggest removing the Home button, and using a link attached to the logo instead: it’s cleaner-looking and more efficient. Otherwise, the organization needs no other changes or reorganization: Each term is concise and self explanatory.

Social Media

It’s great that the owners of Progressive had added a widget for Facebook – it allows much more interaction with users. However, there are still many opportunities in other platforms that they could be taking advantage of: I would suggest including other social icons as well, and allow clients to share content from the site directly.

They currently have a Facebook page and regularly interact with it, but do not have a Twitter account or Google Local page. I would absolutely insist on creating a Google Local page as soon as possible – these are indexed by Google and can greatly impact business. A Google Local page allows for better search results in local searches, and supplies users with maps, information and reviews in the search engine result pages. Google Local is accessed through the Google Plus network.

Twitter and other platforms, such as Pinterest, can also be effective in cultivating new clients for this company. The fantastic before and after pictures would be perfect for a sharing site like Pinterest – subtly branding the images and including a link to the business could really increase their client list and position them as experts in total garden transformations.

Regular maintenance of Social Media is also essential to its success. Luckily, there are options DAM can provide to help increase social media interactions in a time efficient manner.

Images

Images are currently large and tend to load slowly – they can impact search results, as well as force users to abandon the page and/or site entirely. Two sections of the site, Portfolio and Blog are image heavy, and the lack of text and context is an opportunity for the owners to strengthen the site through an explanation. This could be done several ways: a text addition to explain the context with some organic keyword placements, adding a description to the image, or a combination of the two.

You should also use ALT TEXT to describe each image. This can easily be done in WordPress by clicking the edit icon in any given image in edit mode.

From a marketing perspective, the Before and After images in the Blog are both impressive and effective in demonstrating the skill of Progressive Landscapes: they are side by side and easily comparable. However, the image section of the blog has attempted the same idea, but unsuccessfully. The size of the images, load time and format are less than effective, and could easily be changed to the same format seen in the Blog. A small explanation of the changes made would also educate customers as to the level of commitment and work the employees invest in each product, as well as providing search engines with content that can be indexed.

Testimonials

There are currently no testimonials listed on the site, but there are on the Facebook Page. I would suggest the owners contact some previous satisfied customers and ask them to review the company on either (preferably) Google Plus or Facebook. I would then suggest they add some copy to the site’s Testimonials section:

‘See what our customers are saying on Facebook and Google Plus:’

And then add a copy of the public reviews to the site underneath, with naturally placed outbound link to the appropriate Social Media Platform:

“Quote” (Client Name, Location), via (Platform).
This allows for transparency, builds links, but has other benefits as well. I suggest building reviews on Google Plus because they are indexed by Google in search results, and are visible as soon as someone Google’s the company – people won’t have to go searching for them. Combine this with better keyword placement throughout the site, and it would easily impact the search result rankings.

Source Code

There’s an emphasis on acclimating to Internet Explorer in its various versions: personally, I think it’s unnecessary, as many users have switched to Safari, Firefox and Chrome. The code itself seems too heavy: this could be a part of the CSS and theme chosen by the owners, or possibly the size of the images. That is a feature of the WP template you’ve chosen. While not a big deal, code bloat can pose problems for search engine spiders during times of heavy web traffic.

Cleaner code will keep this site easily accessible by the ‘bots (AKA. Spiders), the devices that search and cache the site for search results. It’s also helpful for those who work in the back end of a site, because it’s easier to find and fix any issues.

In all, it’s clear that the Progressive Landscape team are passionate, hardworking and talented. Their obvious knowledge is clearly demonstrated in their offered services, and is further demonstrated in their images. With a few changes to the text, titles, link and Social Strategy, I am confident that this site would get better rankings in search results, and increase their business and bottom line.