Hashtags aren’t just for tweeters anymore. Now that Vine and Facebook have announced “trending hashtag” features, every social media promo campaign must have a well-chosen hashtag, and yesterday an amusing story reminded us how important the strategy behind these tags can be. Basically, some wise guy tweeted #nowthatcherisdead to announce the passing of former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher and scared a bunch of Cher fans (calm down, everyone: she’ll be playing Vegas well into the 22nd century).

It all seems very simple, but the fact that Budweiser thought this billboard was OK only two months ago shows us that hashtagging is still a little too complicated for some:

The budweiser ” #taste is ” billboard-hashtag is such an amazing fail. Was someone drinking too many @blackcrown s? twitter.com/adland/status/…

— Adland (@adland) February 17, 2013

Half of the ads that aired during the last Super Bowl had hashtags, but that number should have been 100% because the strategy is no less important today than it was a year ago. And now it’s time to make some helpful suggestions!

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After the Oreo team’s big social media win dominated the post-Super Bowl buzz, a whole lot of people who had never used the phrase “real-time marketing” before started throwing it around like a hot potato.

The point is that pretty much any business whose description includes the words “firm” or “agency” now needs to claim that it has “real-time marketing capabilities” in order to win the interest of big-name clients. McCann Erickson, for example, named its new social media-only division “McCann Always On”. The “RTM” phrase doesn’t just apply to agencies that label themselves “ad” or “marketing”, either — PR wants to “own” social media too, remember?

The problem is that the whole phenomenon just isn’t that simple — and it’s not too terribly revolutionary either. Explaining that to clients, however, may be a bit of a challenge.

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As we scrolled through all those creative variations on the Human Rights Campaign‘s viral marriage equality avatar last week, we wondered: how often do brands benefit when taking specific stands on social issues? How often do such moves truly damage public perceptions? This isn’t a new debate, of course: last year everyone speculated about the effect that Chick-Fil-A’s official anti-gay status would have on its overall business. The answer in that case seems to have been “very little” — but what about other brands? Some choose to define themselves with bold stances, but most shy away.

Oh, and here’s Fab.com‘s version of the meme: Read more

Sometimes the key for a startup or other new business venture looking to break out can be a single article in a big-name magazine or newspaper. What startup founder looking for “Angel investors” wouldn’t want to say “did you see us in the Wall Street Journal?”

Of course, in order to receive such press mentions, businesses usually require the services of people called publicists or PR professionals who specialize in pitching the story of the scruffy startup to big name glossies, trade papers–or even lowly blogs like ours!

But for those who want to get all those press mentions on your website without actually, you know, doing the work, we present The Startup Legitimizer–a single webpage that can fill all your startup PR needs with a few simple clicks. Which publications would give your cred the biggest boost? The New York Times? TechCrunch? BuzzFeed? TED Talks?!

These famous names, divided into the “kind of legit” and “really legit” categories, even come in pre-organized bundles like “innovators” and “game changers”, which are totally different things. Just choose your favorites, copy and paste the HTML code and say goodbye to pesky PR flacks forever! Check us out!

(Just kidding. Startups absolutely should invest in PR services. And thanks to Digiday for the tip.)

Paid content–it’s not just for blogs anymore! The Washington Post, currently known as the sad husk of one of our nation’s most influential and respected newspapers, just launched “Brand Connect“, which its editorial team describes as “a platform that connects marketers with the Washington Post audience in a trusted environment”. In other words, paid content. Sponsored posts. Native advertising. Brand journalism. And it’s not in a special advertorial section–it’s on the paper’s home page.

We could all see this coming, of course: print ad revenue at the Post has reached record lows. Sure, we still encounter the occasional impressive Game of Thrones promo printed with ink on honest-to-God paper–but print advertising should probably consider intensive therapy at this point.

You may ask why this is news, because lots of other publications do the very same thing.

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The Onion is all about funny, satirical, almost believable stories. When we first heard about Vladimir Putin’s plan to pump up Russia’s fertility rate with a Boyz II Men concert, we immediately thought of the magazine.

But now we know that’s not all “America’s Finest News Source” can do. See, Digiday taught us something this week: The Onion also helps brands discover (or re-discover) their sense of humor via its in-house ad/marketing/advisory team, Onion Labs. This strange experiment all started last year when Microsoft Internet Explorer, desperate for a rebranding, decided to embrace its reputation as “The Browser You Loved to Hate” and ask The Onion‘s advisory team for ideas (one of which was this cute “Child of the 90′s” video). The project grew rapidly from there.

Onion Labs is still relatively new, but the group’s site features a series of funny spots for brands as disparate as Jack Links and 7-Eleven. They’ve also worked on social media campaigns like the #vacationitis project for Hilton Hotels and Resorts.

We can certainly see why the Onion Labs aesthetic appeals to so many brands–if you’re not comfortable making fun of yourself then you’re going to have trouble appealing to that crucial 18-30 demographic. Here’s one of the Lab’s commercials pitching Dove deodorant to men by making light of the fact that guys don’t really like to deal with their dry skin problems:

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One of the most interesting trend stories to pop up so far this month concerned Nike‘s decision to take its social media efforts away from third-party agencies and do everything in-house.

Some industry observers see this move as a sign of larger trends. Given the fact that we recently wondered whether social media responsibilities would fall to PR or marketing departments in the future, we think the topic is extremely relevant to all communications professionals.

Nike claims that keeping all social operations in-house will help its team “gain a deeper understanding” of its fans in the interest of boosting brand loyalty. It started the transition in October by hiring Musa Tariq, former social media marketing director for Burberry, to “kick start” its social strategy.

The sneaker king isn’t the only company to take a greater degree of responsibility for its own social media efforts in recent months: Competitor Reebok conducted an internal audit of all its social channels after rejecting contract offers from agencies, and Digiday reports that other big names like Ford and Campbell’s Soup have done the same.

This isn’t to say that Nike will sever ties with all third-party firms.

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This week Digiday posted on an issue close to our hearts: the challenges of branded content creation.

Reporter Giselle Abramovich asked attendees at the company’s latest Brand Summit to describe the biggest obstacles they face in the endless quest to create compelling content. Our favorite quote from senior associate brand manager Orion Brown of Capri Sun:

“The biggest challenge is creating both consumer-relevant and brand-building content. Some brands (namely, passion brands) lend well to this as they are already ubiquitous and are intimately integrated into the daily lives of consumers — so their hurdle to find touchpoints that feel natural and relevant to the consumer may be lower. But for many brands, it’s a delicate balance between creating a branded message that doesn’t sound ‘preachy’ or like a sales pitch but still drives consumers ultimately to purchase.”

We couldn’t agree more—the process of identifying relevant topics and creating material that truly delivers value without the sort of heavy-handed messaging that repels consumers is a constant challenge (along with the measurement and ROI demands that accompany every business project).

Send us your thoughts, PR pros: What is the most difficult element of the content creation/distribution process?