Great Social Media Idea: Hashtag Your Location Tag!

Howdy friends!

A quicky but a goody today, courtesy of the ace Instagrammers at Cal Berkeley:

Notice how they are promoting a hashtag in the locaation tag section at the top?

Maybe I've totally missed the boat on this, but that was the first time I'd noticed a brand doing that on Instagram, and I think it's a pretty clever idea. Sometimes you definitely do want to use the location tag - I'm a big fan of using the location search when finding pics to like, comment on, and crowdsource - but sometimes it's unnecessary, and I think it's super smart to use it for a quick call-to-action for people to use a specific hashtag, particularly a newly created one or one that hasn't quite gained yet.

For my work at University of Portland, the hashtag #UP is totally worthless because of endless "#turned #up" posts, so I have tried for years to push people to the shorter #uportland than the much longer (and easier to mis-spell on a smartphone) #universityofportland. It's been pretty tough sledding, and I've been looking for a quick and easy way to gently remind people about #uportland without having to type it into the caption every time. So, this idea from Cal came across at the perfect time, and - best of all - it remembers the location once you create it, so you don't have to type it in every time. Hooray!

Thanks for the tip, Cal!