Twitter is a great tool for finding information relevant to your needs in bite-size chunks — if you can get through the noise that has exploded in the Twitter-sphere in the last several months. The use of hashtags (a great, built-in feature for filtering and following content) can greatly help cut through sea of text.

About Hashtags
Hashtags were created to provide users a method for meta-tagging their posts. Meta-tagging works by associating sub-data about a post/topic, etc., on the Web that can be indexed and searched. A very, very loose example would be a Google search. In theory, Google grabs all kinds of content from around the Web and indexes it based on its context. Web sites about collecting stamps are categorized together and sites about model rockets are categorized together.

Site owners have the ability (and it is good strategy) to even further define their site for this indexing function. This is an explanation of which can’t fit into a single post here; however, one method is to assign metadata to the site’s description and to specific content. If a site is in the “model rocket” family of content on a top tier, the site in question may want to deal specifically with, say, “vintage model rockets” and assign meta values accordingly. This meta methodology helps both users searching for content and the site owner, which means everyone is happy and the Internet gains another friend.

How Hashtags Work
With Twitter, metatags exist for the base level function that they do everywhere else: subtext/sub-data. However, finding this content is made very, very easy by the # hashtag function. Here’s how it works:

If you want to find content dealing with, say, the Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball, do a Twitter search on “#Orioles” and every post “hash-tagged” with “#Orioles” will come up. Once you’ve performed this search, you can choose to follow this hashtag search as a stream. Depending on your Twitter client (I use TweetDeck at the moment), you can have columns just for tracking your searches. From there, you can follow the hashtag stream to explore new authors to follow or you can watch and/or participate in the stream.

Another great resource for hashtag content is HashTags.org, which tracks popular hashtag trends, tags and people on Twitter.

How to Participate with Hashtags
Once you’ve found some streams you are interested in, how do you participate? It’s simple…really. If you wanted to participate in the Orioles stream, simply put forth an Orioles relevant tweet as such: “Wow, the #Orioles young prospects are really looking good.” All that needs to be done to get your tweet injected into the stream is the hash (#) connected to the “Orioles.” Armed with this power, you must be aware of etiquette, of course. If you abuse this hashtag stream function, you will most likely hear about it by angry users and, quite frankly, who could blame them?

[Aside: creating a hashtag stream for marketing purposes is the topic of another post coming soon...]

What Does this Mean for Marketers?
To get a handle — at least from 30,000 miles out — on your brand, your vertical, etc., hashtags open up a world of possibility. Searching and watching conversations happening in real-time is a great way to interact with current and potential customers if your overall digital strategy and social media strategy calls for it and, most importantly, can handle it. Once you open up this Pandora’s Box of direct conversation, you must be armed with the proper strategy to both monitor and execute or else you may do more harm than good. We can help.

Matching consumers to products — is it enough?

The Web as ad space has grown in leaps and bounds as more and more users enter the Web sphere. Cart and horse analogies aside, the Web’s growth has been organic and fueled by advertising; no better example exists than that of the social media spaces.

Social media spaces can be best described as any place on the Web where users interact with the site’s content and each other; essentially, the draw of the site is the users and their unique voices. The vast ad networks of linked content-specific Web sites and blogs, niche entertainment/online game sites, community news aggregators, and “friend” spaces are many and varied. However, all have a common thread of real people (for the most part) discussing real issues and concerns in their lives.

With the millions of social space users, the opportunities to match the right consumer to the right product is growing and becoming increasingly more cost-effective and measurable. This should be a slam dunk…numbers don’t lie, right?

The early promise of the Web for consumers was that of a level playing field for price comparison shopping and, of course, the instant satisfaction of shopping from the comfort of your living room. The Web has become much, much more for consumers. It has evolved to be a powerful arsenal of consumer-centric tools. Consumers can evaluate products and services and offer opinions in real time — in some cases, anonymously. Bad service and poor product support is called to light for all to see, as is the opposite true. This social media space can be a mine field for companies without the right guide.

In a seemingly curious move, MillerCoors has opted to not go the traditional “big game/big commercial” path to promote the Miller High Life brand. Rather, MillerCoors, in conjunction with their agency, Saatchi & Saatchi NYC, have opted to go with a 1 second ad spot that will run via local networks/markets (due to competitor Anheuser-Busch’s position as official game sponsor for 2009) and have even created a Web site to house the spot and show outtakes.

A full take on the campaign from MillerCoors’ perspective can be found over @ BizJournals.com, so I won’t get into the back-story of the campaign and the economies therein. What I’m concerned with is the impact; will MillerCoors receive more for their 1 second local buys and Web companion than the $3M A-B is spending for their 30-second national spot? To that end, is the very existence of the 1 second ad just a conduit to the Web campaign site where the brand messaging — Miller High Life is a great value (or, as MHL’s Sr. brand guy, Ken Oglesby is quoted in the BizJournal article as saying “…Miller High Life is common sense in a bottle.”)- is re-enforced? More succinctly, are they using this once-heralded marriage of Big Game/Big TV Spot to point to the Web, where they can get more bang for the buck, analytically speaking?

So, we have a 1 second ad and a dedicated Web site to talk about the ad: a campaign about a campaign. Because this is a blog and I am allowed to draw conclusions, I would argue this is not about economies of scale. To me, it’s about results and integrating messaging across medias to achieve messaging results. What is A-B success metrics for their campaign other than bragging rights?

Clearly, MillerCoors is not choosing to play king of the hill and, most likely, it’s cost prohibitive for the MHL brand to even get into the battle, so, they’re building another hill. As a bonus, their hill can track visitors.

“Yonkers, NY—Consumers Union (CU), the highly trusted, independent publisher of Consumer Reports magazine and ConsumerReports.org, has purchased Consumerist.com from Gawker Media. The popular consumer watchdog blog will operate independently of Consumer Reports publications and be the first property housed under a new non-profit entity called Consumer Media LLC. The change in ownership will be in effect as of January 1, 2009.” [Full Article/Release]

If you’ve been living  under a rock and never heard of Consumerist.com the site is a social media site of sorts, in that, users submit retail horror stories to the editors in the hopes that their story gets added to the heavily (HEAVILY) trafficked site. The net of a story appearing is usually customer satisfaction in the form of a company being called out and deluged with e-mails and calls by users of the site and/or a company representative proactively resolving the situation once the story hits the front page. In the early days of Consumerist.com, it was mostly the former. Smart companies are realizing the power of the site and jumping on the latter.

So, a Web site where people whine about being treated poorly in the hopes of getting a favorable outcome — what’s the big deal? It’s power to the people to affect change…to demand satisfaction for all to see and not settle for poor customer service — AND — it’s now validated by the largest independent consumer-focused organization in the U.S.

I’ve said it before and will write about it again; one initial promise of the Web was to empower consumers. The Web promised us an at-a-glance/immediate way to comparison shop. We were told we could find the best deal and get it with the click of a mouse. This was to be a revolution for consumers! Power to the people! Well, the Web delivered on its promise. Retailers, however, have just ridden the wave and that wave is breaking. The social evolution of the Web is here and retailers that don’t get it (see Circuit City Deathwatch), will not live to see another day.

The social Web needed time to evolve. After all, it had some things to figure out and everyday folks needed time to make sense of the digital landscape and their place in it. Now that we’ve reached a decent jumping off point, the social Web is really just that; social. It’s the ultimate word-of-mouth and it is in real time.

We now, on the Web, see all of those things that make advertisers tick and retailers plan accordingly in “normal” society; identifiable and measurable spheres of influence, Social Proof, and the like. On the advertising side, we can readily identify the who’s and where they spend their time. We know their spending habits, their detailed demographic information, and can track them as they hop around and make purchases. Now, we can go a step further; we can listen to what exactly they are saying about a brand, a retail experience, a service, etc. Not only are consumers sharing their experiences and opinions anywhere and everywhere they are given the option to, they are doing so freely. Is your brand getting trashed online? Right or wrong, it’s out there for all to see.

Consumerist.com is one example of the power of the social Web in the hands of consumers. It’s not a small example, mind you — Consumerist.com has more readers than most daily newspapers. Speaking of newspapers, if I could tangent for a moment: Consumerist.com started as a content-driven Web site to garner advertising revenue, such as newspapers (and many content-driven sites are) are structured (arguably…at least, that is the business model). With this new change in ownership, there will be no more ads on the site AT ALL. Surely Consumers Union is going to use Consumerist.com to help bolster its online presence and drive more subscriptions to its other properties as it moves to a completely online strategy, but, I can’t help but wonder if their strategy is chicken and egg-like. Are they building their online portfolio to build their brand to drive Web subscriptions to the flagship Consumer Reports Web site and, eventually, killing off the print aspect? It seems to be foing that way and would be brilliant on their part, but, that is a different discussion.

No matter what the motivation is for the change in ownership of Consumerist.com, the social Web has given consumers a new and powerful voice in the how’s and why’s of the retail experience. Put your ear to the ground and listen to what your customers are saying or they will go elsewhere- and tell all of their online friends just why they are doing so.