I can’t remember the first time I spotted a hashtag although I can bet that I clicked on my first hashtag on twitter. Just in case you are wondering what the heck a hashtag is, I’ll give you a quick rundown. When people share things on social media, they tag their post or photos by adding a # in front of a phrase and the text and the text following the # turns into a link.
Hashtags are everywhere these days – on twitter accounts, on news feeds, weddings, events even car commercials and TV soap opera’s and music shows. When designed well, hashtags can increase your online following and help pin down what makes your event unique. However, I’ve seen brides and even event managers choose the wrong hashtag for their for a wedding. It doesn’t take a lot of time to pick the perfect hashtag for your wedding but keep in mind that there’s no registration procedure for creating a wedding hashtag. Anyone on twitter or instagram can create a hashtag, this is why you want to make sure your hashtag is the only one for your wedding because you don’t want your collection of instagram wedding photos or videos mixed with that of strangers, this will mess with the intimate , special memories your instagram hashtag will collect. This means that your hashtag has to be unique, encouraging and easy to remember. It is important for you to give your friends and family a hashtag, they can easily remember so they can use it. What would be worse than having guests use the wrong hashtag. Your hashtag must encourage attendees to use it. It’s all about making it fun for your guests to post on instagram. One of the ways to determine if your hashtag is unique is to test search for the hashtag you want to use and see if others are using it already. If there’s an event or wedding with the same hashtag, you may want to switch a letter or number to avoid getting the photos all mixed up or better still choose a different hashtag.
When choosing an hashtag for your wedding, you can start with your first, last or nicknames as your starting point. You can also use numbers for a simple way to set your hashtags apart. Avoid easy misspellings, capitalize the first letter of each word, keep it simple and once you have your hashtag spread the word.
Let people know about it:
You can share the hashtag through your pre-wedding photos on instagram, on your wedding website, save the date card, at the back of your wedding invitation card or you can put reminders of the hashtag in strategic places at the venue to remind your guest and to help with spelling errors.
*There are hashtag generator apps available online. You may want to try using those apps to generate unique hashtag for your wedding.
Remember that hashtags don’t have to just be about last names. They can be about your theme, wedding date, first names squished together or anything else.
Written by Helen Ozor
