How to use hashtags to tell your story

From Ohad Frankfurt at Social Media Today:

Recently I had the pleasure to spend almost a month in Berlin with my entire team over at Swayy, we wanted to post photos from our trip in a way that will help us tell our story in the form of a photo album, so what we did was create a hashtag: “#SwayyingBerlin” - and add it to each photo we upload. That way our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter followers could see a photo album of our trip once they clicked or searched for that hashtag. 

How to use a hashtag to create a perpetual conversation

Rohit Bhargava tells this story at the Influential Marketing Blog:

Several years ago a group of marketers working in the healthcare industry were planning to attend the rapidly growing South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, but felt frustrated at the lack of panels and conversation devoted to the topic of healthcare. Wanting a good alternative, they banded together to create their own show they called South By Social Health (SXSH). 

For weeks they used the #sxsh tag (and a secondary tag of #hcsm – “health care social media”) to bring the conversation together. For years after the event, both tags continued to be used to bring digital healthcare conversations together. What’s the lesson for brands? 

Sometimes a hashtag can offer the ultimate means to foster a conversation on a topic broader than your brand, and let you do it in a way that can last far beyond any one campaign.

How to use hashtags to unite your content campaign over multiple social networks

Chris Crum blogs at WebProNews: 

One of the great things about hashtag marketing is that it allows campaigns to flourish across multiple social networks, and obviously the addition of Facebook is a huge part of that. People have been using hashtags on Facebook pretty much since hashtags have been used in popular Internet culture, but now they have meaning. 

Hashtags can also of course be printed anywhere you’re running an ad in the physical world as well, and Facebook’s addition simply makes them more ubiquitous across the social web. This is becoming more the case all the time. Vine, for example, recently added hashtags, as did Flickr in its iOS app. Google recently added a new related hashtags feature to Google .

Postano Digital Marketing Manager Julie Blakley says, “Before implementing your own branded hashtag, you’ll want to think about being transparent without necessarily including your brand name, as this can discourage people from participating, as well as give brand haters more motivation to upend the hashtag’s meaning.” 

“Generic hashtags like Nike’s #makeitcount have more creative potential both for the brand and for consumers. Either way, the hashtag should be informative and concise rather than conceptual."

She provides a number of tips here.