Hashtags remain a powerful marketing tool for increasing reach, engagement and brand visibility. Understanding the variations in hashtag usage and how to optimise your use of them is essential to stay ahead of the marketing game. To help, we have put together a quick but comprehensive guide so that you can master your use of hashtags in this current year.
WHAT ARE HASHTAGS?
First and foremost, a hashtag is a symbol (#) that was first used in 2007 by Chris Messina. Messina had the idea of using a symbol to group related tweets together. He posted a tweet introducing the hashtag and since then, its effectiveness has only grown.
Hashtags are utilised on most social media platforms and are predominantly a way of grouping posts together that surround a particular topic. This makes finding content that you are interested in much easier.
In terms of social media marketing, hashtags can also be used to boost your brand’s social media presence by improving reach and engagement rates.
WHY ARE HASHTAGS USED BY BUSINESSES?
- To connect with like-minded people and therefore, reach their target audience. For example, using a hashtag such as #hotel will display your posts to users who follow or search for that hashtag.
- To increase brand visibility by having content shown to non-followers.
- To build brand awareness with a brand-specific hashtag that makes their content more discoverable.
- To increase engagement by taking part in conversations that are happening on a social media platform. Including a trending hashtag will make posts visible in that conversation which can improve social media engagement metrics.
- To contextualise what they are posting without the need for repetitive captions or using valuable characters on platforms like Twitter.
HASHTAG TIPS
- Choose hashtags that are relevant to the content or conversation that you are posting about
- Insert the hashtags into your comments on Instagram to make the post look less ‘spammy’
- Don’t use spaces, punctuation or symbols or the hashtag will not work
- Keep the hashtag wording short and easy to remember
- Make sure that the hashtag word is not obscure, otherwise it may not be used or searched by other social media users
- Make sure that your accounts are public or non-followers will not be able to see your content
HOW TO FIND THE BEST HASHTAGS
- Monitor which topics/hashtags are trending by utilising software
- Know which hashtags are being used by your competitors and industry-relevant social media influencers so that you can see how they are engaging with your shared target audience
- Social media listening tools such as Hootsuite can help you discover which hashtags are the best to use for each social media platform you are on
- Analyse which hashtags were successful on previous posts and continue to use them
- Consider using related hashtags to the hashtags that you are already using
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Having an awareness around how to optimise your use of hashtags can have a multitude of benefits for your business. For more information about how we work to build your online presence, contact us.