Describe the heart and soul of your business in four words.
Business consultants often test the alignment of a company by challenging a range of employees to describe the business in as few words as possible. If you've ever tried it, you know it's not easy, but it does make you to think about the real reasons your organization exists.
At United WebWorks, we decided to leverage the exercise with a branded hashtag contest. The marketing director asked our team to come up with an all-encompassing social media catchphrase in a week’s time. During our pizza lunch, she wrote all of the hashtags on the whiteboard and we discussed each one, narrowing the hashtags in a surprisingly fun and productive team building process.
What is a Branded Hashtag?
Hashtags have been around for awhile. In 2007, a Twitter user tweeted an idea that would make it possible to group and quickly search through millions of messages by adding a label set off by the pound or hash (#) symbol.
Branded hashtags are words or phrases that capture your organization's mission, message or mindset. Use them to signify your uniqueness or commitment to doing business in a customer-centric way. Eventually, you may have a couple of main brand-focused hashtags with a number of related ones that can be added to campaigns or individual promotions.
Some well-known examples are Barack Obama's #YesWeCan; Charmin Bath Tissue’s #TweetfromtheSeat and (no introduction needed) #ShareACoke. See how these companies managed to capture something of their culture and mission in a word or two?
And the Winner is….
The UWW branded hashtag contest asked our staff to consider these questions:
- What differentiates UWW from other digital marketing agencies?
- "You don't want a website. You want your phone to ring," is a phrase that summarizes our marketing message. What do we mean by that? How do we make that happen?
- Do you love your job? Why?
During our weekly pizza lunch at the office, the team stared at the whiteboard filled with hashtags that ranged from the hilarious to the terrible to the serious. This exercise gave us a unique opportunity to share a few laughs while having a productive conversation on why we do what we do, how we do it and what we want for our clients.
#SurprisinglyEffective
It was a surprisingly effective team building time as we grappled with our message and who we really are as a company. You'll be glad to know that we didn't go with #WWUWWD? ("What would UWW Do?") since it was only funny to us.
The resulting winners are: #UWWMeasuresUp and #UWWGetsYou.
#UWWMeasuresUp highlights the fact that we regularly interpret measurable performance indicators for all our online marketing clients. Numbers that reflect what's going on in your online marketing, such as bounce rates, unique site visits, click-through rates are essential to making your digital presence work for you, bringing in leads and customers.
The second one, #UWWGetsYou is a flexible tag that summarizes our commitment to customization. Every client we serve is totally unique, calling for a tailored approach that meets their goals. We realized that we can add some of our different services to the tag — such as #UWWGetsYouLeads or #UWWGetsYouPublicity or #UWWGetsYouPhoneCalls."
We're definitely focused on our clients' return on their investment when they commit with United WebWorks, and this is the guiding principle by which we make decisions about websites, emails, social media campaigns- — everything! In other words, "If it doesn't bring a good ROI, we ain't doing it!"
Think it's a good idea? Try it in your workplace and find us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter to let us know how it went
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