Introduction
An answer that social media marketers desperately seek is how to use the correct and relevant hashtags to attract the attention of their target audience.
On Twitter, using hashtags with tweets enables you to increase engagement by 100% for an individual and 50% for brands. So far as Instagram is concerned, most hashtags are branded ones.
The idea behind using hashtags by progressive brands are goals and strategies like making a product viral and driving views, likes, and shares to promote their brand and others.
Hashtags were used first on Twitter but are common now for other social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and many more.
You incur no cost other than the time to research or watch trends. But hashtags offer a powerful way to engage your audience.
This post provides insights into what a hashtag means, its importance, and how to use it effectively on various social media platforms.
Now, Let’s throw some light on Hashtag.
What is Hashtag actually?
A hashtag is a keyword phrase or a word with a preceding hash (#) symbol. It is helpful for users who search for a specific keyword or hashtag as it appears on social media or a post. It is used to catch attention and improve interaction.
Many brands create custom hashtags for a specific campaign, making it easier to keep everything grouped, like relevant posts and conversations. They help to keep similar types of content together.
Why are Hashtags Important?
Hashtags are used to describe your images or posts. Connecting with your social media public is almost impossible – without using hashtags.
Let’s say you are a startup bakery selling cakes and pastries. And you want your target audience to locate you. To achieve this, you start using hashtags with keywords like #bakery, #chocolate, #birthdaycake, #pastry, etc.
So, your audience will get the results that include the words searched. Hashtags are languages to communicate with social media, conveying that to the users. It helps to grab the user’s attention and beat your competitors.
Let’s take an example –
While scrolling Instagram, we found the below post with one of the popular hashtags, “#food.”
(Credit: https://www.instagram.com/p/CmMjki0K8Yq/)
How to Effectively Use Hashtags?
Hashtags are used with a strategy in mind. Using popular hashtags to connect to specific audiences fails because of the large customer base.
The solution lies in using enough research, analyzing the outcomes, and applying them thoughtfully.
The correct ways to use hashtags are
- Find the appropriate ‘Hashtags’ as per your need
The hashtag’s popularity does not justify its use in your brand. So, set your goal before selecting the hashtag. It helps you to stay ahead of competitors and contribute to your goals.
There are ways to search for hashtags, like researching across apps or using tools to find keywords like Ritetag.
Creating brand-oriented hashtags offers you the best way to increase clicks, overall reach, etc.
It is in your best interest to use hashtags in combinations of popular, brand-specific, or niche types.
- Use Relevant Hashtags in your Content
It is important to remember one best practice of using hashtags in your social content, and that is avoiding overstuffing. On doing this, your posts may fall under the spam category as labelled by the social media platform. Moreover, you must follow the best practices of each social media platform in terms of the numbers used.
Furthermore, it would be best if you customized the hashtag placement as per the guidelines set by each social media platform. People may not click away if you use the hashtags at the bottom of posts, captions, or descriptions.
- Track Your Hashtags with Analysis
Tracking hashtags is quite important as it helps you measure their impact on your social performance.
Some of the key metrics that need monitoring are:
Popularity: How many people use hashtags?
Reach: How many people are viewing & following the hashtags?
Users: Who views & searches for the hashtags?
Interactions: How many people engage with the posts, including the hashtags, based on likes, comments, or shares?
It is good not to use the same hashtags but to use them from time to time. So experiment and use new hashtags.
You can use hashtag tracking tools to discover relevant and popular hashtags in 2023. Some of these tools are free to help you based on your needs.
Brand24 is one such tool that helps in hashtag tracking and analytics. You can evaluate the popularity and performance of your hashtags from there. It can help you find the top influencers and to measure their social media reach.
Another such free tool is BuzzSumo. It helps you to find buzz on social media. With this, you can search for specific hashtags based on popularity across social channels and get suggestions from the tool.
Finally, we must mention Digimind, a social listening and market intelligence tool which analyzes hashtags. It offers psychographic and demographic hashtag
analysis, like segmenting your messages as per user expectations based on country and state.
How to Use Hashtags for Different Social Media Networks?
It would be best if you customized the hashtags based on various platforms. Here are some of the best practices or guidelines to be followed.
The guidelines as laid by the Creator Community are:
- Use only 3-5 hashtags at a time.
- Insert hashtags in your comments, posts, and stories
- Use only relevant hashtags based on ‘Community and Brand’.
It is a platform apt for your branded hashtags.
The best practices are:
- Use only 2-3 hashtags.
- Insert hashtags in your posts and on your organization’s page. Hashtags in comments or articles are not viewed in people’s feeds.
- Blend the popular, niche, and branded hashtags.
YouTube
Hashtags can help people to find videos on YouTube.
You optimize the use with the following guidelines:
- Restrict the use of hashtags by only 3-5 hashtags per video
- Insert 1-2 hashtags in your title and the balance in your description.
Conclusion
Progressive brands use hashtags based on goals and strategies like making a product viral, driving views, liking, and sharing to promote your brand and others. It is a powerful tool for engaging your audiences.
Tracking hashtags is one the most important ways of using hashtags other than finding the right hashtags or using relevant hashtags in social content. However, tracking and finding relevant hashtags is challenging – without the paid tools. But, you can combine the free tools in the market to achieve your purpose.
Propel Guru is a top-notch creative digital marketing company, and the social media marketing consultants at Propel Guru will help you to improve your performance in an unprecedented way. Here, our expertise helps you find the best strategies and combines various approaches to keep you one step ahead of your competition.
So what are you waiting for? Connect with us Now!
Also, we would like you to visit this link to watch our previous video on the benefits of Social Media Marketing.
Ajay Dubedi
CEO & Founder
15+ years leading business operations and client management in the segments of digital marketing and CRM. Driven by test-driven development paradigms, and exceedingly collaborative across all disciplines (from stakeholders to product to design to development to users – and back again).
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