How do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?

Thus began the history of the hashtag. A simple tweet from @Chris Messina (Open-Source Advocate, with the aim of facilitating the identification of specific topics.

It then reappears on the occasion of some fires that hit the woods of San Diego.

Today, thanks to hashtags, we can immerse ourselves in news groups, use them as filters, highlight our contents.

The first social network to use them was Twitter, but it is Instagram that decreed their success by adding this feature in 2011.
Also in Facebook since 2013 it is possible to create posts with hashtags but with slightly different rules. In fact, Facebook does not show all the results addressed to the hashtag, but only a few and in order of importance. So we find posts from friends, pages we follow, but not from strangers. The lack of virality and diffusion perhaps explains why they never took off on this social network.

The world is increasingly turning to social media to find current information and news, using it no longer just as a filter for identifying topics, but as a real tool to convey advertising and social campaigns.

Uno studio americano reveals that 53% of American adults took part in at least one of the activities promoted through hashtags.

Using the most popular hashtags helps you to increase the number of followers. However, select the terms that really represent you so as not to attract people who are distant from your message and your target.

Social media are now one of the most important marketing tools in companies. Many companies use the web as a communication channel to talk about their commitment to the company and to strengthen brand awareness.

According to research by the Top Employers Institute, 92% of companies invest in corporate social responsibility programs, growing in reputation, engagement and business.

A company that strategically manages social media therefore has greater visibility, communicates faster and builds more stable relationships with its customers.
Indeed, the main function of social media must be to communicate. Anyone who creates a new profile with the sole purpose of selling will never fully achieve the desired goal.

The communication plans that are developed on social networks through campaigns very often use the hashtag as the main dissemination tool.

Find out with us how a community is created around a hashtag:

1- #SHAREYOUREARS
For almost 37 years, Disney has supported Make-A-Wish in its mission: “Every day we at Make-A-Wish® Italia commit ourselves with passion, dedication and professionalism to fulfill his heart’s desire to give him a better life and help him to find hope “. To date, they have fulfilled more than 100,000 wishes together.

#SHAREYOUREARS is a hashtag launched by Disney. Collect photos with mickey ears. For each participant, the company donates $ 5 to the “Make a Wish” association. Thanks to enormous user support, Disney managed to raise $ 2 million.

www.worldwish.org/shareyourears

2- #WEHATEWASTES
This is a campaign launched by a company working in the energy sector, E.ON Italia, against energy waste. The company comes up with a new strategy that has #odiamoglisprechi as its concept. And so, to get the message across, the building of local historian Radetzky was covered with a flow of fake ice. The hanging sign says “Left the air conditioner on? #odiamoglisprechi “.
A provocation that generated the amazement of all passers-by in the street, in the bars, in the neighborhood, spreading the environmental debate also on social networks; #palazzoghiacciato and #odiamoglisprechi became trend topics for two whole days

www.odiamoglisprechi.it/palazzo-ghiacciato

3- # UNALBEROÈ
Conlegno (Consorzio Servizi Legno Sughero) and Legambiente have transformed 2000 posts into 40 trees!
The campaign ‘To make a tree you need a hashtag’ was held on the day of the National Tree Day, November 21, 2017, and entered among the social trends of the day. The two companies involved have decided to donate a tree to a needy intervention area for every 50 posts published with the hashtag # unalberoè.

The involvement of citizens was fundamental, called to take an active part in the project, raising public awareness of an issue that affects everyone closely

Said Fausto Iaccheri, president of the Consortium.

4- #LET’SGETITINOURHEAD
UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency) has started a fundraiser to ensure education for refugee children linked to a donation via SMS.
Alongside a diffusion through conventional channels, a social campaign #mettiamocelointesta was also born which invites you to share your own photo on social media, with a book in mind, motivating the choice of that volume.
The gesture represents that, as we have had the opportunity to make a choice in our life, refugee children should have it too.

Let’s put it in mind: only education can save the life and future of a refugee child – UNHCR

5- #SPEAKBEAUTIFUL
“Let’s change the way we talk about beauty on social” is the campaign launched on Twitter in 2015 by the creams and beauty products company Dove which states:

Social media likes to judge. Too often, these judgments have a negative impact on our self-esteem, so much so that 80% of negative comments on women’s bodies concern themselves.

Twitter and Dove decided to work together to try to make social media a better place. Women all over the world then shared photos that indicated their love for themselves, encouraging others to do the same.

#SpeakBeautiful has become the common thread of all these posts.
The official account @Dove also replied, for every negative tweet, inviting creators to keep a more civil language on the web.
Throughout the year 2015, women used the hashtag more than 168,000 times and impressions on social media were over 800 million.

1- #OCCUPYWALLSTREET
It was the first hashtag campaign to be born online thanks to meetings of demonstrators. This is a peaceful protest movement born in September 2011 which, from social media, resulted in a protest in the city of New York at Zuccotty Park. What characterizes this movement, like most of the campaigns on the web, is the absence of a leader or a “center of power”, as thousands of people have been mobilized exclusively via the Internet.
Today the protest has also spread to other cities for example. #OccupyBoston, followed by #OccupyDenver and #OccupySD.

2- #METOO
It is a movement against harassment of women that was born in October 2017 in order to demonstrate the frequency of violence suffered.
According to the famous weekly Time, #MeeToo has become “a sort of collective showdown: born, however, as an act of individual courage”.
CNN, the popular US broadcaster, says the hashtag was used 825,000 times on Twitter from Sunday afternoon to Tuesday, while on Facebook, in less than 24 hours, 4.7 million people worldwide took part in the campaign, with more of 12 million posts, comments and reactions.
In fact, according to social media, more than 45% of the inhabitants of the United States are friends with someone who posted a message containing the expression “MeToo”.
The hashtag is credited to actress Alyssa Milano.

3- #BLACKLIVESMATTER
It is an international activist movement in the fight against racism, originating from the African American communities. The hashtag, from which the movement of the same name then originated, began to spread on social media following the acquittal of 17-year-old Afro-American killer Trayvon Martin. From its first appearance – March 2013 – until March 2016, the hashtag appeared on Twitter nearly 11.8 million times. Later, #AllLivesMatter and #BluLivesMatters were also born.

4- #BRINGBACKOURGIRLS
Campaign born in 2014 for which celebrities and world leaders were photographed with a sign that read #BringBackOurGirls, in order to free more than 200 girls kidnapped in 2014 in Nigeria. The tragedy of these teenagers is reported by former Nigerian education minister Oby Ezekwesili who is the first to engage in a series of protests after discovering what had happened. For days she tries to launch a series of hashtags on Twitter, but the one mentioned above – which has had the greatest success – is created by a lawyer who tags her in a message on social media. Within a month, #BringBackOurGirls was used more than 3.5 million times, thanks also to famous people, including former first lady Michelle Obama.

5- #ICEBUCKETCHALLENGE
Viral campaign launched in the summer of 2014 by the ALS Association with the aim of raising public awareness on ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis).
Virality is given by the rules that must be followed to take part in the initiative.
It consists in pouring, or being thrown, a bucket of cold water on the head and then making a donation to the association.
In the US, 1.2 million videos were shared on Facebook, while the challenge was mentioned 2.2 million times on Twitter. In Italy, AISLA raised almost 2.4 million euros from 51,461 donors.

In the photo Pete Frates, a former baseball player, who was diagnosed with ALS and who started the viral campaign.

6- #TRASHTAG
#Trashtag is the viral challenge to clean up the environment. Byron Roman launches a provocation on Facebook to all “bored teens”: take a picture of an area that needs to be cleaned and then take another after fixing it. The post went viral, with an average of about 20 likes per post he publishes, this has reached 101,420!
In addition to raising awareness among the masses on environmental issues, the initiative has created something concrete for the good of the planet, judging by the more than 400,000 posts published.

7- #NOTONEMORE
It is a campaign born as a request for greater restriction on the use of weapons made by the father of a victim of the Isla Vista massacre. On May 27, during a funeral service for the victims, the father asks those present to send postcards to any political representative who comes to mind with the phrase #NotOneMore and asking for stricter regulations on firearms. The students who attended the memorial retweeted the hashtag and in less than 24 hours it was repeated on the Twitter platform over 30,000 times.