From graffiti tags, to Facebook photo tags- tagging is all about identification, which is the single most important focus for branding. You want people to know it is you, from a simple word or message or line curve.

Hashtags are just the same, they should be an easy vehicle for which you, your company, or your product can be clearly identified.

And for a sales perspective it allows you to identify a wider audience of customers and potential customers and see what it is they are saying in relation to your product. The more they talk about it and use your tag, the larger this reach. And hashtags allow you to recognise and respond to patterns or the clients/customers themselves. It is a green light for communication.

But with great potential, comes great pifalls, and too often companies use difficult, inappropriate hashtags that they either apathetically implement, or do not properly brand. Inevitably they are lost in the ever ebbing social sea.. It is therefore essential to have hashtags that are simple and usable so that you get the best from your digital strategy.

As with anything worth doing, this takes some thinking about. Here are some tips for choosing and owning your hashtag.

1. Make it simple and short. Twitter is already a task of brevity, don’t make this difficult with some long complicated hashtag that does not automatically identify your brand, Hashtags should be guessable.
2. Make it unique. Using a generic tag will loose the company’s voice. It also may be tempered by any negative associations or slang usage.
3. Make it yours. Repetition is the key. The more people see it and associate it with your company then the more it will be used by people talking about you.

Once you have your hashtag up and running you can start to communicate effectively with your customers, plus with new free software you can begin to analyse it and tease out exactly who, where, when and why people are talking about you. Health warning: it can get quite addictive.