This week I was inspired to write about the power of hashtag. Worcester has been be hosting the #WorcestershireHour Festival of Business 2017, a celebration of enterprise within the city that has been brought about from a virtual audience of local businesses, charities and the cities community via the widely-used hashtag, #WorcestershireHour. The hashtag was launched in 2013 and now boasts a following of just under 20k. The Festival of Business event is organised by the twice weekly hashtag, #WorcestershireHour.

This week, the hashtag was trending on Twitter as number five in the UK, resulting in the content shared using this hashtag has potential to reach a massive audience. This is a great example of the power of the hashtag and how it can be used to help you generate an audience, visibility for your content and build your brand awareness across numerous platforms, and not just on Twitter.

Hashtags can be used to generate conversations, promote events, bring together communities, attract new followers, promote campaigns, competitions and create awareness.

This week I am going to share four reasons and ways you too can harness the power of the hashtag for your brand, and who knows, perhaps your hashtag could be trending:

1. Simplify search

There is so much information online, accessible for anyone, but often it can make it that much harder to find exactly what you are looking for. The hashtag allows you to search for a specific topic, subject or discussion that might be taking place in real time. This might be a TV show (I’m an avid TV show hashtag commentator!), a campaign or even something in the news. Hashtags bring together similar themed content, making it easy to follow topics of interest.

2. Start a conversation

With a single hashtag, you can organize ongoing discussions, allowing different voices across social media to join in. Using hashtags allows you to keep a steady stream of your social media content in search results so that even those watching can follow along.

Plus, consider that for every person you are directly commenting with on a social network, there are potentially hundreds (if not thousands) of potential customers watching your conversation, hoping to gain insight.

3. Crowdsource your content

Setting up a hashtag inviting your audience to share content, upload photos or videos for the chance to be featured on your brands website or across your social media platforms can generate a huge amount of awareness and interest for your brand, driving traffic to your website and specific content. It is also a great way to share user generated content, that can often be far more powerful than sharing your own content.

4. Promote your event (pre, during and post)

Setting up a hashtag for your event is a great way to promote it pre, during and post, generating a conversation beforehand, asking people what they might want to hear about and help shape your event,

inviting discussion during the event and post event for anyone who may have missed the event or to allow ongoing networking post event. A hashtag for an event is a great way to make people feel part of the action, and part of the event.