Despite the social media platform you prefer using, proper usage of hashtags has immense benefits in increasing engagement and reach. For starters, a hashtag is a phrase or word that has the pound symbol before it. It helps in relating a particular content to a topic or category, thus increasing the accessibility of your content during searches on the platforms. The simpler and shorter the words preceded by the hashtag, the easier it is for people to discover the topic.
In addition, the account you are using should preferably be public so as not to limit the users who interact with your brand. To sell certain brands, you may be required to use specific hashtags, failure to which access to your brand is limited.
Hashtags: A Brief History
Also known as the Octothorpe, the hashtag symbol helped in marking numbers. Chris Messina, a web marketing specialist, first used the hashtags in 2007 when he presented the idea at Twitter’s offices.
Consequently, hashtags in grouping related tweets took off and have grown into today’s effective symbol. Hashtags have gone beyond Twitter and are currently applicable in other social media platforms for marketing purposes.
Hashtag Practices and Tools
Some of the best practices for creating hashtags for your brand include monitoring your competition and observing the most common hashtags used. You will gather information on what the market desires and what hashtags are effective in certain conditions.
Furthermore, you can use Hashtagify. Me for Instagram or Twitter hashtags suitable for your brand. The tool facilitates you to search for a hashtag’s popularity in a specific period and also helps in suggesting a preferable hashtag depending on your caption.
Using tools such as RiteTag, you can easily compare the photo you want to upload with the media caption that best suits it. Therefore, you will be aware of the trending hashtags enabling your brand to reach more interested buyers.
A social media listening tool also comes in handy in discovering the best hashtag for the social network platform you use. The result is a content-specific hashtag that helps in narrowing down to a target audience.
As you gather experience in the hashtag marketing network, it is advisable to keep tabs on effective hashtags that have proven successful on previous occasions. Match such hashtags with the currently trending ones to help in reaching more people interested in your brand.
Benefits of Using Hashtags Across Social Channels
Using hashtags comes with numerous benefits, most notably including an increased engagement with your followers. Your brand becomes more visible to persons engaged in a specific conversation, resulting in more shares, comments, likes, and an increased following. In addition, hashtags help in building brand awareness, thus promoting your business and driving conversations. During social issues affecting the community, they help in connecting brands to such important causes.
By extension, this allows brands to achieve social responsibility to critical issues facing their community.
Twitter allows you to write up to 280 characters that help build context to your social media post. On the other hand, Instagram has a lower limit of captions similar to LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Facebook. The hashtag helps in communicating valuable information without having to repeat captions. Brands can also come up with creative posts that allow users to get the intended message with ease.
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On platforms such as LinkedIn or Instagram, users can follow a hashtag without following a particular brand. It makes it easy for them to interact with your recent posts in their feed which also attracts new followers. For influencers and brands working with other brands, hashtags are a more straightforward way of disclosing association with those brands. It lets the audience realize that the content posted is sponsored by a particular influencer.
Popular hashtags such as throwback Thursday or flashback Friday are a fun way of engaging your audience and accessing a broader conversation. On Twitter, use the hashtags before the intended caption or at the end to emphasize a keyword. When commenting, replying, or retweeting, use the hashtag to attract your desired topic or conversation.
You can use Facebook hashtags in any part of your Facebook post or commenting to allow users to find your post when searching for a particular topic. Hashtags have revolutionized marketing on social media platforms and are a cheap way of boosting engagements with your audience.
