Similar to Twitter’s hashtag functionality, hashtagging a word within the Facebook platform allows that word to be clickable in News Feeds. When clicked, Facebook reveals a stream of updates with that #word. Alternatively, users can search for hashtags using the # symbol in the search box.

For publishers, Facebook Hashtags will allow for additional segmentation of content as well as a means by which to reach more interested audiences. For users, it will offer the opportunity to discover and consume new relevant content.

How will Users and Brands use this new feature? 

The first major brand we spotted taking advantage of this new feature in a big way was Taco Bell. The post which was pushed out by the brand last Wednesday appeared in many News Feeds on Friday, June 14^th as a promoted post.

Although timely, this post illustrated some of the obstacles both brands and Facebook itself will have to overcome to make hashtags truly valuable to users and publishers alike. Let’s dive into some of my initial learnings.

1. Spam, spam…and more spam

When I clicked on the hashtag in the Taco Bell post, a slew of spam popped up. The posts that weren’t spam were in different languages. As a user, I was underwhelmed. As a social marketing professional, I was disappointed. I looked around to see if there was some way I could further filter this stream—a sort by location or language feature? Nope. Some of the posts included a translation feature powered by Bing, but it wasn’t present on all of them.

Since #like isn’t exactly related to any specific type of content, I did a few searches for topics that I’m interested in (#socialmedia, #digitalmarketing, #marketing) to see if this was a problem across the board. Although some of posts were relevant, I found most of the content to be low quality, spam, or in another language.

I, did, however find local hashtags (#michigan, #annarbor) to have higher quality content and minimal spam.

2. I cannot see anything…and what I can see, I don’t like. 

Because Facebook posts aren’t limited to 140 characters like their concise counterparts, users have minimal post visibility in the hashtag stream. For the searches I did, I could only see about 2-3 posts at a time which made it more frustrating when those three posts weren’t relevant to the topic I searched.

3. Relevance is key. 

For publishers and brands, using relevant hashtags will be of the utmost importance to avoid the bizarre user experience I had with the aforementioned Taco Bell post.

Conclusion

Although Twitter has long suffered from spam on trending topics and popular hashtags, Facebook’s hashtag issues are more glaring. A few questions to ponder: Will the spam issue resolve itself after the initial hype has faded? Will it take a greater number of public pages creating a larger pool of hashtag content to help eliminate this problem? Or will Facebook have to take steps to combat spam while refining the overall user experience? Time will tell. In the meantime, how you be leveraging hashtags for your clients, brand, or business? Share below.

If you haven’t heard wedding bells yet this spring, chances are you will soon. It’s wedding season! While couples get hitched all year round, mid-April through mid-October is considered to be the most popular time of year to get married. Two Enlighten employees are currently in the midst of planning their nuptials, so we thought it was the perfect time of year to check in with Shawna Cermak, Account Director and Carrie Widder, Associate Copywriter to see what they’ve discovered in the digital space that is helping them say “I do.”

Congratulations! When are you getting married?

Carrie: I’m getting married September 21^st, 2013

Shawna: I am still in the research phase, so we don’t have a set date identified yet.

What digital tools are out there to help assist with wedding planning?

Carrie: There are a ton! Obviously, like many other brides, I have found Pinterest to be a really great tool for wedding planning. It can really help you define the visual story you want to tell. While I was in the process of picking bridesmaids dresses, I found a website called WeddingtonWay.com which I found really useful. They have a large selection of dresses and designers available on their website which you can add to a virtual showroom, then invite your bridal party to view—they’re encouraged to like or comment on the dresses which ultimately helps the bride figure out which dress to go with. There are a ton (I mean a TON) of wedding blogs to glean inspiration and advice from out on the web right now, along with a multitude of websites that will give you checklists, templates and hosting capabilities for your own site, and companies that will help you customize your registry or help plan a honeymoon.

Shawna: There are a ton of really great mobile apps out there that brides can use. Plus, there are bridal blogs, note tools, request for proposal (RFP) tools, registry tools, and Pinterest (great for deciding colors, theme, and general ideations). The advancements in recent years in the digital space have definitely been game changing for brides.

Which ones are you using to help plan?

Carrie: I’ve been deferring to WeddingWire.com quite a bit to read reviews and recommendations on vendors I am considering using. I know it’s going to make me feel way less stressed knowing if other brides have good experiences with someone I am considering hiring for my wedding day. It’s also a great place to find any wedding events happening near you. I also downloaded an app that I love called Wedding 911 by The Knot. There are a lot of generic question and answers on there, as well as a section simply called “911s” where brides can basically ask anything and other brides can chime in on their problem. There’s a lot of variety and it’s fun to read. Lastly, I have been using Google Drive to manage my guest list and it has been a huge help, since I can easily share it with my fiancé and both sets of parents.

Shawna: I spent a lot of time researching the best mobile apps offered because I am constantly on go. The two mobile apps that I’ve settled on using are iWedding Deluxe and The Knot Ultimate Wedding Planner. I’m pretty early in the process, so I intend to use both until I work through which one is giving me everything that I need. I have noticed that iWedding Deluxe does offer the ability to manage your guest lists, but the Knot Ultimate Wedding Planner does not. I have also leveraged Pinterest to create a hidden board of ideas for the wedding. I’ll share them with my fiancé once we get to that phase, but I don’t want my friends and family who follow me to see what I am doing. I know that our wedding will be destination (since my fiancé would like to be married on the beach), so I’ve relied on a nifty RFP site called speedrfp.com to allow me to communicate out to multiple venues fast without having to submit my request on their individual websites.

Are there any tools you’ve found that are not helpful?

Carrie: After initially using Pinterest to develop my vision, I’ve found I’ve been using it less and less. I can’t really explain it, since I do love it as a wedding tool; it just hasn’t been imperative to my planning process lately, so it has sort of faded out for me.

Shawna: I haven’t run into any tools that I have absolutely hated. The problem is that there are so many out there. It’s hard to decide what to leverage because there are so many options.

How are you incorporating digital ideas into your wedding day?

Carrie: Well, having been a wedding guest myself pretty recently, I know that everyone is going to have their cell phones on them and will probably taking pictures for Instagram and Facebook, and probably tweeting throughout the night. I definitely want to see those photos since I will probably be all over the place that night, so I am planning on utilizing a unique hash tag that friends and family can use whenever they post anything that night. That way I can easily search for it later and find the posts and pictures.

Shawna: I will create a specific Instagram channel and hashtag. That way guests can gather unique pictures throughout the day and share them with us. We will probably load most of our music onto one of our phones (potentially using My Wedding DJ app), so we will know that the DJ has the specifics of what we want played throughout the different parts of the day. Also, I am a huge proponent of Etsy, so I am sure that some favors and small gifts will be ordered from that site.

What’s changed significantly about weddings in the past few years? Is it for better or worse, and does it make planning a wedding any easier or harder?

Carrie: I think having better technology these days makes wedding planning easier and harder at the same time. Harder because with the crazy amounts of blogs, websites, and tools that are out there, there’s this whole pressure to have the most unique, most beautiful, most DIY wedding you can have. But for someone like me who is planning a California wedding from Michigan, it has also made the planning process completely doable, since it’s easy for me to research online and email anyone I need to. So a little of both I would say.

Shawna: I’m a good person to ask this question because I planned a wedding over 10 years ago. Back then, there wasn’t all of the social tools and apps available to leverage. I actually walked around with a huge binder and had to visit independently with all of my vendors. Now, there are lots of options for digital tools to plan your wedding. I truly believe that brides could do the whole event online if they desired. Women are very “sense” oriented though—we love to see, touch, and experience things for ourselves. However, vendors still need to be mindful that upfront research is done online, so they must be sure to have a strong digital presence.

Thanks Shawna and Carrie, and congratulations again! Good luck to the both of you on the rest of the planning process.

Ann Arbor-based digital marketing agency Enlighten (www.enlighten.com) recently donated its time and resources to make over the 826michigan (www.826michigan.org) website. The site redesign aimed to provide the 826michigan team with the tools necessary to efficiently manage its content while also delivering an enhanced experience for website visitors and volunteers.

“Several of us here at Enlighten have volunteered with 826michigan in some capacity over the years, and we had all noticed ways in which its site could be improved,” says Adam Kempa, senior software engineer with Enlighten. “We wanted to give the 826michigan staff the tools to more easily manage the website and online workshop registrations, hopefully freeing up more time for working with students.” Adam adds, “It’s nice to work for an agency that’s willing to take on projects that help the local community.”

826michigan is a chapter of 826 National, a network of 826 organizations in eight cities. The organization was founded in 2002 by award-winning author Dave Eggers and educator Ninive Calegari. “Enlighten is a remarkable company, and we feel enormously grateful to enjoy their partnership and to benefit from their brilliant team’s technical and creative efforts,” says 826michigan executive director Amanda Uhle. “We’re so proud that 826michigan constituents who use our website can now see a really perfect articulation of our brand in a site that’s organized and helpful, friendly and vibrant, and visually engaging. We strive to do and be all of these things in our free writing and tutoring programs for school-aged students, and are so pleased that Enlighten made that vision an online reality for us.”

826michigan is an organization dedicated to providing free educational programs to students aged 6-18, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. 826michigan’s services are volunteer-driven and structured around the idea that strong writing skills are essential to success in school and life.

For more information about 826michigan programs, or to become a volunteer, please visit www.826michigan.org.

About Enlighten

Enlighten (www.enlighten.com) is an award-winning digital marketing, online advertising, web development, data analytics and strategic consulting firm building innovative online experiences for major brands including Hunter Douglas, Richmond American Homes, John Frieda®, Jergens®, Bioré®, illy caffè, Olympic Paint and Stain, Fruit₂O, Jimmy John’s, HealthMedia, Comerica, Johnson & Johnson and more. Based in Ann Arbor, the independent digital marketing agency was founded in 1983.

“The primary goal is pretty straightforward: to build a simple, fun, sharable platform that taps into our desire to see how people look over time,” says Steve Glauberman, CEO of Enlighten. “I think it provides interesting context into how people became who they are today. It’s always interesting to watch others grow and change as time goes by.”

Focused on promoting ease of use, YearlyMe was designed to deliver a seamless photo sharing experience. Drawing influence from picture albums and yearbooks, the site allows users to showcase photos in a manner that feels natural – and even nostalgic – to viewers. “The site has the highly functional feel of a social site app, and uses Facebook Connect to facilitate easy photo retrieval and sharing,” says Asif Gill, senior software engineer with Enlighten. “Users can choose to source photos from an existing Facebook account, or upload them from their desktops. The idea is to post one photo from every year of your life and share your album with others. It’s a fast, fun, free way to showcase your evolving look for family and friends.” The best part of the experience, Asif says, is piecing together periods of your life and seeing how you’ve changed. “Most people have at least the last five years of pictures in Facebook, which offers a great starting point.”

YearlyMe was designed and developed by Enlighten Ventures, a sister company of award-winning Ann Arbor, MI-based digital agency Enlighten. “We strive to foster an environment of innovation, and we reward those who help push us in this direction,” Steve Glauberman says. “While we’re clearly dependent on client work, these kinds of projects can sometimes provide us with opportunities we can’t find elsewhere. They allow us to experiment with concepts early on.”

For more information on YearlyMe, or to create your own digital yearbook, please visit www.yearlyme.com.

About Enlighten Ventures

Enlighten Ventures is a sister company of Enlighten (www.enlighten.com) that both develops innovative digital solutions and partners with select start-ups to incubate new businesses. Enlighten is an award-winning digital marketing, online advertising, web development, data analytics and strategic consulting firm building innovative online experiences for major brands including Hunter Douglas, Richmond American Homes, John Frieda®, Jergens®, Bioré®, illy caffè, Olympic Paint and Stain, Fruit2O, Jimmy John’s, HealthMedia, Comerica, Johnson & Johnson and more. Based in Ann Arbor, the independent digital marketing agency was founded in 1983.

I was curious about what it would be like to do as those consumers do, and scan all of my purchases. I signed up online to join the National Consumer Panel, and following my admission received my very own scanner in the mail. I excitedly opened the package and hurried to get started with my new toy.

It wasn’t as fun or as simple as I thought it would be, though. In fact, entering in all of my purchases almost took longer than shopping for them.

The flurry of questions took time to punch in answers on the alphanumeric handset. Who went shopping? Who came with the shopper? What was the store’s name? Did I have any coupons? Finally a chance to scan the item, but then there were more questions. How many did I buy? How much did it cost? Did I use any deals? Were there any coupons or sales? What was the coupon’s face value? How much did I spend in total at the store? Did I use a frequent shopper card? How did I pay? What was the total amount I paid?

Making these scans was eye-opening. It was tedious, a little frustrating, and in the words of my coworker, the scanning device was “like an antique.” I thought, as I struggled to determine how to properly record a buy-one-get-one free item, scanning these barcodes is just not fitting into my lifestyle. Could I work it into my routine? Would I be able to keep this up week-after-week? Was it worth it to me?

Earning a $25 iTunes Gift Card would take well over a year even with on-time weekly transmissions. That means that every week of scanning earns the participant less than half a song on iTunes. There are monthly sweepstakes that feature cars, cash, vacations, and shopping sprees, but that’s not a guaranteed reward.

For me, keeping this up would not be for the prizes. What for, then? The program materials purports participants, “make a difference in what manufacturers and retailers make and put on store shelves.”

How committed am I to that cause?

How committed should I be to that cause?

I feel guilty as I replace the scanner back into its cardboard box and flip over the mailing label to return it to the sender. How can I not give back what I so willingly take? I hesitate but ultimately hand over the package for today’s post.

I return to my desk, and decide resignedly that I will sign up for a secret shopper program over my lunch break.

Designed to create a digital pathway to Hunter Douglas products, “The Art of Window Dressing” invites consumers to explore over 50 products and 5,000 color and fabric options prior to making a purchase. Because Hunter Douglas window treatments are a high-consideration product customized for each customer’s home, the product visualizer app represents a critical marketing tool. Users can view the products as they would look in a stock photography living room, bedroom or kitchen, but they can also take a photo with their iPad and use the app to scale and position window treatments in the context of their very own home. The result is a seamless, accurate representation of how Hunter Douglas products fit each customer’s unique needs.

“That ‘The Art of Window Dressing’ creates such a personalized shopping experience is vital to the purchasing process,” says Steve Glauberman, CEO of Enlighten. “Users love to experiment with colors and textures to achieve their decorating goals and get the look just right.” Once they’ve created their dream look, users can email the results to a Hunter Douglas showroom where the staff can make it a reality. The app is available free of charge through iTunes.

“The Art of Window Dressing” has won several previous awards, including Silver in the Mobile Applications – Shopping category of the W3 Awards. It was also named both Best Consumer Goods Mobile Application and Best Design Mobile Application in the first international MobileWebAwards.

For the complete list of 2013 Internet Advertising Competition winners, please visit http://www.iacaward.org/iac/winners.asp.

About Enlighten

Enlighten (www.enlighten.com) is an award-winning digital marketing, online advertising, web development, data analytics and strategic consulting firm building innovative online experiences for major brands including Hunter Douglas, Richmond American Homes, John Frieda®, Jergens®, Bioré®, illy caffè, Olympic Paint and Stain, Fruit₂O, Jimmy John’s, HealthMedia, Comerica, Johnson & Johnson and more. Based in Ann Arbor, the independent digital marketing agency was founded in 1983.

A good example of this is a video game called Re-Mission, designed for young people battling cancer. In this game, the player (a.k.a. the cancer patient) becomes Roxxi the nanobot, whose mission is to destroy cancer cells and prevent the spread of cancer. Developed by HopeLab, with support from a boatload of impressive organizations, Re-Mission is designed to be a fun, engaging game with a purpose: improving “treatment adherence” helping patients stick with their treatment program. It does this by increasing the patient’s knowledge of the disease and the treatment effects, and improving their feelings of self-efficacy, the sense that you can impact your own life—who doesn’t need a little of that? And, guess what? It works. Patients who play Re-Mission are more likely to complete their prescribed treatment.

Re-Mission is an example of a “serious” game. Serious games are games for education, persuasion, health or some other “not just entertainment” purpose. Play is uniquely positioned for this type of stealth learning, because it can be so engaging and immersive that the player can more readily absorb the content. Brands can also take advantage of games to help drive excitement and create a stronger affinity for the brand. Games are the most downloaded type of mobile app—and if it is fun and tightly tied to the overall brand, it will be embraced.

NASCAR is another easy example—who wouldn’t expect the racing folks to have games? But there are lots of games, some serious, all engaging on subjects you wouldn’t expect. Dying in Darfur is an awareness game designed to encourage people to help refugees in Darfur. The Amazing Food Detective from Kaiser Permanente helps kids develop knowledge about healthy eating habits. The University of Michigan (and a host of others) developed a game-like approach to making health insurance choices. Stuck in an airport? Try Jetset, a game for frazzled travelers. Download Zombies, Run! to keep you moving.

While well-done games can encourage a special level of immersion, playful design can make the online experience more compelling and fun. Want to try on clothes before buying? Try a virtual fitting room. (It is sort of like paper dolls with a real image of you and the shopping rush for those that like shopping.) Like the TV show Psych? Join Club Psych and earn points for unlocking the Atomic Pineapple in Squirrel Assassins. Have a kid that needs to start thinking a little about careers and life? Try MeTycoon.

Games and playful experiences aren’t for every situation. A game about the tragedy in Darfur makes me more than a little uncomfortable. But games can engage in a way that is almost unique, making learning feel effortless and progressive mastery desirable. If you don’t believe me, watch a four-year-old’s endless pirate sword fighting and take a little time today to play.

The magic lies in the intangibleness of it all. Memes can’t be created – they occur naturally when something strikes a social chord on the Internet and is absorbed into the culture. And while it’s semi-possible (yet discouraged) for marketers to essentially force a meme, it is possible (and greatly encouraged) to create an environment more conducive to meme activities.

It’s all about making it easy for your target market to not only share your campaign, but also add to it, mix it around, jazz it up, and essentially (and oddly enough, hopefully) ‘hack’ your ads. While easier said than done, the “Harlem Shake” left many insightful lessons in its dance-crazed wake:

Keep Your Routine Simple

The Harlem Shake was wildly accessible thanks to its lack of rules and absurd simplicity. All it took was a whole lot of ‘not much to pull it off’ and that appealed to the masses. Lesson learned: when you have marketing goals that include “consumer engagement,” make the experience as simple as possible with a low barrier to entry. So whether soliciting participation in social media contests, loyalty programs, voting polls, etc., don’t ask too much of people too soon. You can always dive to deeper levels of engagement down the road, but simply getting people on the dance floor should be your first goal.

Dance to the Beat of Your Own Brand

As tempting as it may be, don’t be so quick to jump on the aspirational video meme bandwagon. If a video won’t help promote who you are or what you do as a company, don’t force it. Instead, think about how you can create original, value laden content to share. As always, it should be about communicating your call-to-action while delivering real value to your consumers and ultimately moving people to the next step of brand engagement.

The Art of a Graceful Exit

Just as quickly as memes rush in, their popularity runs out. That’s to be expected and embraced as part of the process. In fact, to really be a meme a video can’t overstay its welcome. Ironically, nothing kills a meme like massive media involvement. The Harlem Shake, for instance, met its demise after The Today Show ran its own version of the video just 11 days after the phenomenon began. Ad Age deemed it officially “played-out” after PepsiCo’s dancing soft drinks got in on the action.

While there are theories, nobody knows exactly why some memes catch on like they do. But there’s no time to overthink it. In the mysterious land of memes, spontaneity is definitely key.