What Do Facebook Hashtags Mean for your Crisis Management?

Hashtags are popping up all over the place! From Twitter to Instagram to Google+ and as of last week, Facebook.

I recently wrote a post about using hashtags within your crisis communications, why it’s important and how to develop your hashtag strategy. Although this post mainly refers to the use of hashtags within your Twitter crisis communications, it’s not to say that hashtags across the board, throughout social channels do not present the same crisis management opportunities.

How do Facebook hashtags work?

When you create a post and include a hashtag (i.e.: #crisismanagement) that hashtag becomes clickable once the post is published. When you click the hashtag, a stream of other posts with the same hashtags will appear, allowing you to see what others are writing and discussing about the given subject.

Hashtags will also be searchable within the Facebook search bar and you’ll be able to compose posts directly from the hashtag feed.

The purpose? Facebook has announced that this is one of the new features (more to be announced in the coming weeks and months) that will make Facebook content more searchable and findable across the platform.

Note: Be sure to check your privacy settings when hashtags roll out to your personal account.

What do Facebook hashtags mean for your crisis management?

As a brand, you’ll now have the opportunity to have a better understanding and better monitoring abilities when it comes to what is being said about you on Facebook. Like we have always been able to do on Twitter, you will now be able to search for specific hashtags and see all public posts containing that hashtag. This is something you’ll want to utilize within your everyday monitoring, and especially throughout and proceeding any future social media issues and crises.

As for your crisis communications, it’s time to incorporate a Facebook hashtag strategy into your crisis communications plan. Including a targeted and strategic hashtag strategy into your Facebook crisis communications will give your audience an efficient and easy way to find your communications and messages during a crisis. This is an extremely valuable function.

It’s once again time to update your crisis plan!

As I say often, your online crisis communications plan is not a static document. It needs to be updated and kept relevant as social media accounts and new features roll out. Now is another time for you to review your plan and incorporate these new features and functions that, when used properly, will seriously help your company or organization towards becoming a crisis communications super-star! These functions and features are free and were developed to make your Facebook experience more valuable, connecting you closer to your audience – which is exactly what you want when handling a crisis or issue online.

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