Every year, a number of people and companies use hashtags the wrong way, leading to online rage and other consequences. 2013 also had its share of hashtag blunders which people can learn from.
Here is a list of the worst social media practices that should be avoided in the coming year.
Courtesy of Hashtags.org Analytics
The hashtag generated as many as 54,000 tweets. Eventually, the heat became too much for the bank and it closed the discussion with this tweet.
All these mistakes show the importance of researching and using tools like hashtag analytics to find the best names and arrangements to use before launching a hashtag. People should also be more cautious and learn from their previous campaigns as well as the major mistakes committed by companies in 2013.
2013's Top Hashtag Campaign Fails
1. #AskJPM
The hashtag was created by JPMorgan Chase & Co., the biggest bank in America in terms of assets, to introduce new company executive Jimmy Lee. The initial tweet invited social media users to ask for career advice from the leading executive. However, the hashtag was soon attacked particularly about its ?London Whale? loss to which the company was fined almost $1 billion. Many Twitter users resorted to the hashtag to talk about the ruthlessness and dishonesty of banks and lending institutions and how these are negatively affecting the American economy. Courtesy of Hashtags.org Analytics
2. #AskRKelly
R&B singer R. Kelly created the hashtag to boost promotions on his recent album titled ?Black Panties?. Kelly has over 500,000 Twitter fans and intended to communicate with them to increase sales. However, the hashtag was immediately under attack from users who joked about his clothes, sexual activities with minors and related scandals. R. Kelly was able to answer 16 questions then finally shut the hashtag down due to overwhelming trolls.
3. #ArmaniCaptions
The Armani team was shortly attacked by social media trolls after the @armani account shared a photo of a black woman wearing Armani at the Governors Awards. The team tweeted that Idris Elba stopped for photographers to flaunt her Armani dress. The problem was, the woman in the picture was Alfre Woodard, not Elba, who is male. The hashtag was created by social media users to poke fun at the company with users uploading photos black celebrities and captioning them with the names of other stars.
4. #GrillMOL
Budget airline Ryan O?Leary received a lot of heat after coming up with the Twitter chat #GrillMOL where he answered questions and criticisms about his outrageous and explicit activities like requiring cabin crew to strip down for the company calendar. O?Leary also answered questions regarding his proposed ?fat tax? in which overweight individuals would be required to pay more. He presented himself in a very unlikable manner and will most likely cause a lot of potential clients to look somewhere else. Also, O'Leary seemed to not know about the purpose of the hashtag because he failed to include it in most of his posts, rendering the concept of a Twitter chat utterly useless.
5. #TwEATfor1K
The hashtag was created by fast food chain Wendy's to promote its new flat bread grilled chicken sandwich. However, the handle they used on posters cited @Wendy?s when in fact, the official company handle is @Wendys without the apostrophe. Many Twitter users hoping to win the prize were instead led to a woman named Wendy and living in Canada. Also, many Twitter users were already tweeting the hashtag when the campaign was still bound to launch on April 1, 2013. The fast food chain most likely overlooked this one considering how successful its previous and subsequent hashtag campaigns were.
6. #WTFF
The hashtag was supposed to mean ?What the French Fry? to increase hype and curiosity about Burger King?s new French fry formula which featured lower fat fries. However, the creators may not have known that WTFF also stands for a profane statement. Many individuals who were posting random things on Twitter or simply wanted to rant online by using the common hashtag were immediately funneled to the same conversation.
All these mistakes show the importance of researching and using tools like hashtag analytics to find the best names and arrangements to use before launching a hashtag. People should also be more cautious and learn from their previous campaigns as well as the major mistakes committed by companies in 2013.
