Please Follow These Instructions
We have put a lot of pride and effort into the hashtags we have so far, so use these instructions to make sure your submission is up to our standards. You should stop and really think about what you are submitting to the community. We hope all of you take as much care in hand selecting tags as we have!
Step 1: Search Google to check if the venue has twitter account. If it does - use that - you're done!
The venue has already come up with a unique identifier - don't try to reinvent the wheel! Remember - the account has to refer to one location - if it refers to a chain or a brand, then you should ignore the twitter name and create your own hashtag that identifies the specific venue. Also, do not use a chef or other employee's account, only ones that correspond to the venue.
If you are the owner/manager of a venue - you should create a good twitter account (specific to that location, whether you use it or not) to reserve that name, and then submit your twitter username to be your hashtag.
Step 2: This place doesn't have their own twitter account - I want to suggest a hashtag using the instructions below.
If you just want to create your own hashtag for a favorite place, we would love to give you that honor - but we ask that you be really thoughtful about it. You are creating a tag for a whole community on not only twitter, but all sorts of other companies that use HashCeratops. Coming up with a string of letters to name a restaurant is easy, but creating a good hashtag is WAY harder - it is considered an art form in some cultures! So, on to the business of creating tags...
- As a starting point - create a basic name:
- As a next step - check that nothing else comes up in Google:
- If another place or topic comes up in Google - make it more specific:
Create a string of text that identifies the place you are tagging. Keep it short, and capitalize individual words where possible. Avoid extraneous text that could be a chore to type out.
For example, a restaurant called "Taj Majal" should probably not use the hashtag "TajMajal" because it for the most part means something else - the namesake tomb in India. It would be better to hash it "TajMajalRestaurant". Confirm the uniqueness of your hashtag.
For example: a common/generic restaurant name like "Taj Majal Restaurant" exists in multiple cities (see for yourself on Google), so we need to improve the uniqueness of this name corresponding to the exact venue you have in mind. The best way to do this is add a city abbreviation at the end, like ATX for Austin or STL for St. Louis. But now our tag is getting long. So in the previous example - we could drop the 'Restaurant' part of the tag "TajMajalRestaurant". Because we are adding CHI to make it "TajMajalCHI" - we no longer need 'restaurant' - there is only 1 Taj Majal in Chicago, so this is the shortest and best unique hashtag possible.
On the other hand, in some cases a city identifier is sortof redundant. For example: the "Viper Room" - there is no need to put "LA" on the end of your tag - we know what you mean by "ViperRoom" because it is really the only place with that name.
Be sure to check Google again once you have a new tag, to make sure the results set still point to the venue in question and not something else entirely.
Now, a final wrinkle is that there are often more than 1 location of a restaurant in a given city. In that situation, you might need to get creative and put the neighborhood abbreviation at the end instead of a city abbreviation. Just be sure as always to search whatever you come up with, to make sure there isnt another place that could be confused with that name (ie: TajMajalDowntown isnt unique). Keep in mind, if there are more than 2 or three locations in a given city of a restaurant - its probably not worth tagging.
Step 3: Check your HashTag quality
Make sure to avoid the following characteristics - which we have identified as being BAD qualities in a hashtag:
- Check your spelling.
A misspelled hashtag means you are telling the community to also make your mistake. Party foul! - Avoid ALLCAPS.
It is attention grabbing but it looks spammy. Obviously, in some cases, the venue has chosen their own unique capitalization - in which case you should use that. - Avoid chatspeak where possible.
Lolcatz unwelcome - HashCeratops gwin 2 eat dat bad kittee! - Dont use zipcodes.
While they are unique, they also are obscure. Most people only remember their own zipcode. Where the heck is 54628?!? - Avoid generic words.
"Bemelmans" is better than "TheBemelmansBarandCocktailLounge" - who wants to type all of that?!? - Dont append random numbers.
This isnt your chat handle from 1995. I'm talking to you, Fantasmo99.
That should be it. Happy tagging!