Over the last decade, an ordinary symbol has become one of the most widely used all over the world. Every brand campaign uses the HASHTAG ‘#’ to increase its reach and impressions across numerous social media platforms. Also, anything that begins with a hashtag (#Meme) immediately attracts your attention. Hashtags are also popular for categorising material into different groupings. They function as a social networking version of a search engine, helping people gather information faster.
Hashtags allow you to reach out to those who aren’t necessarily your immediate followers. You may start, join, and participate in new social media conversations by using hashtags. Your brand will gain greater awareness if your social media marketing postings acquire more retweets, comments, likes, and shares. Hashtags help social media sites and users categorise material while also increasing the visibility of your social media posts.
If you know your target audience is there you should be active on social media too. However, there are millions of people on social media that aren’t in your target audience. Hashtags are also a wonderful way to screen out those people and tap into the conversations of your target audience. Because some hashtags are more popular than others, it’s critical that you use hashtags that are related to your brand image. To figure this out, conduct some research to see which hashtags are popular among the audience you’re trying to reach.
Why should you use a hashtag?
Hashtags work. They help you grow your social media profile by allowing everyone interested in your hashtag to see your content, which isn’t simply your followers. By connecting with customers and joining the conversation about what’s hot, hashtags can help you develop a brand for your business or yourself. You are more likely to achieve fantastic awareness for your brand if you join in the high-traffic conversation by discovering the most popular trending subjects. The greater your visibility, the more likely you are to be able to build a larger audience, and a larger audience raises the possibility of new leads for your business tremendously.
How to Use Hashtags on Twitter
Using Hashtags on Twitter can give you a huge advantage. Individuals can see a 100 percent increase in engagement and brands can see a 50 per cent increase in engagement by using hashtags.
People communicate with one another even if they are not following each other on Twitter because hashtags inspire them to participate in conversations about the same topic. While adding long and wordy hashtags in a Tweet, such as #bestcoffeeshopintheworld, can boost your social media presence, hashtags are designed to make things simpler to locate and engage with people, not the other way around. Using too many hashtags in a single post, in addition to extended hashtags, can impair your social media presence. If your tweet contains more hashtags than content, it will come across as desperate to your followers, and it will certainly dilute the message you’re attempting to portray.
- Tweets with 1-2 hashtags get twice as much engagement as those without them.
- They also get 55% more retweets.
- However, tweets that use more than 2 hashtags show a 17% drop in engagement.
Participating in Twitter Chats is another fun and productive method to engage in hashtags on Twitter. Twitter Chats are public Twitter conversations centred on a single hashtag that you can follow along with and participate in. They are frequently recurring and on certain topics in order to connect people and their specialised interests on a regular basis.
How to Use Hashtags on Instagram
Using hashtags on Instagram, similar to Twitter, can help you engage with more people than simply your followers. Hashtags on Instagram provide an organic way for viewers to discover branded content through topics and forums that they are interested in. Engaging with a community is a great way to grow a brand, and Instagram hashtags make it easy to do just that. Hashtags on Instagram are useful because they help other Instagram users find your profile, which increases your chances of gaining more followers.
In contrast to Twitter, adopting more specific hashtags on Instagram can help your business reach a larger audience. When publishing on Instagram, one tip to keep in mind is to look at the hashtags your audience is already using and connect your hashtags to them. If you use generic hashtags on your images, you’ll probably get fewer engagements, and your shot won’t stand out as much as you’d like.
Interactions are highest on Instagram posts with 11+ hashtags (you can use up to 30 per post).
Why Hashtags on Facebook and LinkedIn Don’t Work?
Although hashtags are useful and can increase engagement on your business’s social media accounts, they don’t always work on all platforms. They’re not meant to be used on Facebook or LinkedIn, for example. If you keep hashtagging on LinkedIn and wonder why your hashtags aren’t clickable, it’s because hashtags aren’t supported by LinkedIn. This completely negates the hashtag’s purpose and utility.
Posts that do not contain a hashtag perform better on Facebook than posts that do. Since Facebook introduced hashtags in 2013, research has indicated that using hashtags in your Facebook posts provides no significant benefit. Instead, it has the opposite impact, causing your pals to become irritated. The failure of hashtags on Facebook is due in part to the fact that Facebook users do not search using hashtags.
If you haven’t used hashtags in your personal or professional social media posts, it’s never too late to start. Hashtags are a rapidly evolving communication tool that can help you expand your social media presence and increase engagement to improve your business.
How to effectively use #hashtags for your social media posts
1. Keep it simple and relevant
When choosing a hashtag for your calendar, make sure it is something that people are searching for and that they can easily remember.
In the social media universe, there exist a plethora of hashtags. Using a hashtag that is long and difficult to spell or pronounce is unlikely to result in a positive outcome. An ambiguous, never-used, or generic hashtag, on the other hand, will not yield the desired results.
Your hashtag should be short, concise, and easy to remember. It should provide your audience with a clear picture of the conversation’s topic.
Finding topics that are relevant to your audience is the key. You should look for hashtags that are already trending and are relevant to your content and organisation. Hashtags on social media help categorise your material, allow users to follow a trend, and even allow you to interact with a community.
2. Using trending hashtags
A trending hashtag is a hashtag that has become very popular. You must have heard people talking about what’s “trending now.”
It can also refer to the hashtags that are currently trending or the most talked about at a given time. Popular hashtags are frequently centred on big international news topics. Engage with a trend that is relevant to your business by using that tag.
When you use a popular hashtag in your content update, you might reach a significantly wider audience. Your updates can be seen by more people than simply your fans and followers.
More people will re-share your piece if it is truly informative, enhancing your total brand recognition. Use the best social media automation tools to schedule your hashtag posts on social media. Refer to the national day calendar or any holiday calendar to plan branding campaigns to get more traction. After all, consistency is the key!
3. Don’t overuse hashtags
Hashtags are an important aspect of any social media marketing strategy. They increase your brand’s visibility, allowing you to reach a larger audience with your message. Furthermore, people will remember your hashtag if you use it several times on other platforms.
However, each social media network has its hashtag frequency, and mixing them up could result in lower interaction. According to the Social Baker study, employing more than ten hashtags reduces interaction by 68.2 percent.
Twitter | Because of character count restrictions, avoid using more than 2 hashtags per tweet for best engagement.
Facebook | Use 2 hashtags on Facebook; one popular hashtag and one custom hashtag for your brand.
Instagram | It allows up to 30; however, keep it to no more than 9 per post for better engagement.
LinkedIn | There is no constraint on the usage of hashtags. But it has been recommended to limit it to a maximum of 5. Otherwise, LinkedIn Algorithm could mark your posts as spam.
Pinterest | Use 2 hashtags on Pinterest to help pinners to find relevant content.
TikTok | Use 4-5 hashtags on TikTok to boost your reach on the platform.
4. Search the hashtag before you use it
Check the social media network in question to be sure your hashtag isn’t being misused. Also, make sure you don’t use a hashtag that could be construed negatively or that another brand is using for their advertising.
When hashtags are used effectively, they can help generate online engagement, raise brand awareness, and eventually improve sales. So, when deciding on the ideal hashtags, keep your target audience in mind.
Check to see whether anyone else is using it and what they’re saying. If you want to make your tweet stand out, using a negative hashtag might not be the ideal option. So it’s preferable to do your homework and avoid making an unforgivable blunder.
5. Be specific and unique
As a marketer, you want to use a hashtag to reach out to your audience, particularly during special events and Twitter discussions.
You must, however, engage the audience by using unique hashtags if you want others to join in the dialogue. You can’t expect people to retweet your message if you use generic hashtags like #marketing or #seo.
To acquire greater engagement on their social updates, people nowadays combine distinctive, trendy, and branded hashtags with improved social media marketing tactics.
Without a doubt, hashtags are an effective technique for social media brand marketing. You’ll obtain better results if you employ a hashtag that’s carefully chosen and strategically applied.
Although hashtags are used differently depending on the channel, you may improve their effectiveness by following best practices. As a marketer, you must also stay current on social media’s continuously changing features and consumer preferences. Each year introduces new features and advancements. Try to be proactive and well-informed.
6. Create brand engagement
Hashtags have the incredible capacity to link your business to a variety of well-known and highly visible issues.
Using the appropriate hashtags will bring in new followers and allow you to interact with them on social media. When hashtags are used correctly, they can help you reach out to more people and improve customer relations. Your fans are more inclined to interact with you on social media if they feel at ease with your brand.
While you don’t want to ignore them, hashtags aren’t necessary while communicating with your followers. You also don’t have to use a hashtag in every post.
It is critical to note, however, that you should not utilise hashtags when responding to someone. Avoid using these characters when they aren’t needed, whether it’s in a retweet or a reply. Don’t bring it up in a conversation with a consumer.
Including keywords in your hashtags isn’t enough to improve your internet visibility. Make sure your hashtags are conversational and one-of-a-kind. This clever use of hashtags is crucial to a successful social media marketing strategy for your company.
Growing engagement also necessitates consistency. You piqued people’s interest by utilising trending hashtags; now, you’re building on that relationship by posting more relevant content at more opportune moments. But for a busy marketer, Consistent social media posting can be an oxymoron without the support of a social media scheduling tool.
Summing-up
Finally, if you’re using social media to reach out to a target audience, you should use relevant hashtags to achieve the best results. Who knows, you might come across keywords that have the potential to become viral and help your business grow!
Need help coming up with your hashtags for social media? Shergroup’s social media industry professionals can assist you in developing your social media hashtag strategy. Contact our business solutions advisors if you want Shergroup’s social media experts to dive into your socials and plan the best strategy for you to receive maximum engagement.
You can reach us |
By Phone | 020 3588 4240
Website | www.shergroup.com and you can chat to us from here
Email | hub@shergroup.com
Facebook | Check out Shergroup on this channel and message us
Twitter | Check out ShergroupChat on this channel and message us
LINKEDIN | Check out Shergroup’s LINKEDIN feed – and please FOLLOW us!
Instagram | Check out ShergroupChatter and follow us!