Blog Entry #3: Exploring Hashtags Part 2

The primary hashtag I explored in this activity was #PSL. The content in the tag is mostly pictures of Starbucks customers with their pumpkin spice lattes or customers tweeting about wanting/buying a pumpkin spice latte. The attitudes presented in #PSL are mostly positive, with customers talking about enjoying or anxiously waiting to get the latte. Since fall just began, a lot of the opinions in the tag mention the relief that the pumpkin spice latte is back. I believe that the content in #PSL is very helpful to the chain due to its overwhelmingly positive nature, which reflects well on the business and could lead to more purchases in the future.

The Starbucks company Twitter also uses #PSL when they are replying to customer’s questions about the drink. I think this would also be helpful to Starbucks because it not only increases the popularity of the tag, but could lead to people following the link the #PSL and seeing the overwhelmingly positive content, which would have the great effects I listed earlier.

There are a couple flaws I see in the tag. The first is that some people seem to use it in reference to the premiere sports league in addition to the pumpkin spice latte. This could make someone who explores the tag for the first time confused or disinterested in future engagement with it. Additionally, I don’t know how helpful the tag actually is for the Starbucks brand. I mentioned earlier that someone exploring the tag would be enticed by its positive portrait of the brand, but I doubt many people actually explore the tag. It seems more like people just use it to talk about their own experiences with the drink. So while it could be helpful in theory, I am not sure if it actually is.

My suggestions to Starbucks after exploring # PSL would be to continue utilizing the hashtag and to address the problems I have mentioned in order to increase effective engagement with the tag and, hopefully, business. I do not see myself exploring or using the tag in the future, but it was interesting to see how others did.