June 2013 - Storytailer

A couple of days ago, I wrote an article about how dealerships (or any business, for that matter) can use hashtags in their social media posts to potentially increase exposure.

The biggest question I had was regarding hashtag visibility from personal posts so I thought I’d write a short article with that answer.

Facebook privacy settings trump everything.

What does that mean? If you put a hashtag in a post on your personal profile that is public, anyone clicking on (or searching) that hashtag has the ability to see your post. If your posts are limited to friends of friends, only those people can see those posts. If your privacy settings are “friends”, then only your friends would see your post in a hashtag search.. you get my point.

Unless your friends are hashtag-using people, hashtags have the most possibilities for businesses and Pages. That being said, it could be useful to create a hashtag for a conversation amongst friends (or a common interest or event.. say a birthday party or other group event) so that all of those involved in the conversation/event would have the ability to view all the posts, pictures and other related content easily.

So, there’s your answer. The visibility of your personal posts with hashtags rely completely on the privacy settings of THAT post so don’t freak out and think that everyone can see your hash tagged personal posts should you decide to use hashtags.

(Except maybe the NSA, but that’s a different story).

As you probably heard, Facebook has integrated hashtags into their system. This provides another way in which your dealership has to get exposure for their Page. The old rules still apply, though. If you have crappy content, it’s not going to help. However, if you’re posting good content, not only is it another way to get exposure but you might even pick up some new “likes”. Yeah, they’re not necessarily going to be people in your geographic area.. they could be from anywhere in the world. However, my guess is that Facebook users are more likely to click on an easily-clickable hashtag “just because” than to do a full on Facebook search for a brand name.

Obviously, it’s a brand new feature so who knows if people will use it or not. My guess is they will in the same way they do on Twitter, Instagram, etc.

My advice: start adding hashtags to your Facebook posts. Use hashtags that people would search for. Don’t worry about hash tagging your dealership’s name.. people will search for that if they want to see YOUR posts specifically. Hashtag your brands and model names (that are in the content posted, of course). Think about what people would be interested in and, if applicable, use those hashtags. Think minimal and relevant in your use of hashtags. Save the “reactionary” and “opinion” oriented hashtags for Twitter (ie. #justsaying or #noms or #FML) unless you’re going to try and hijack a hashtag a la Jello.

Hashtags (for me, at least) went live today. I decided to search #Ford and these are a few examples of what I saw. None of these are Pages that I “like” with my account. Keep these examples (of which there are MANY) in mind the next time you’re posting content to Facebook. Do you want your Page’s content in the mix?

P.S. The last one’s my favorite. 😛

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