How to use hashtags on social media effectively
Hashtags are one of those features that are difficult to understand and use at first. However, once you get the hang of them, the results come so much easier! They’re a great way to connect with people around a particular topic. Hashtags are a way to group together conversations or content around a certain topic, but it’s important to remember that hashtags without context won’t be that useful and often become irrelevant. Depending on the context, they can also be ineffective.
Hashtags are most popular on Twitter and Instagram, but they can be used on just about any other social media platform. If you want to market your brand online, making use of tags is a smart choice. Examining them can help boost social media reach and engagement with your audience. A good social media strategy includes using a mix of popular, relevant, and branded hashtags.
Here is a breakdown of how important hashtags are in this field of social media marketing and how you can incorporate them to boost your brand’s presence.
What is a Hashtag(#)?
Hashtags are a popular way for you to use your brand, product, or company on social media. They let people search and find you when they’re using the hashtag and your content is relevant in their search. Posting frequently and interacting with your followers can help increase the visibility of your content.
Using hashtags is common in social media, but it can be tricky. You need to spell out phrases without any spaces or symbols and without periods, for example, #ThrowbackThursday, etc.
Hashtags make content easier to find and read, whether your social media post is visible to someone who already follows or likes you or not. They allow your content to be seen by anyone and help people who aren’t following or liking you.
Basic guide to using hashtags
- They always start with # but they won’t work if you use spaces, punctuation, or symbols.
- Make sure that your account is public because otherwise, the hashtags you put in your posts won’t be seen by anyone who isn’t following you.
- You should keep your hashtag appropriate and concise. The most successful hashtags tend to be shorter and easy to remember.
- Using relevant, but specific hashtags is recommended. If it’s too obscure, you’re less likely to find other users and your message won’t get shared as widely.
- You should try and keep your hashtags to a minimum. More often than not, you will end up with an unprofessional impression & people won’t take the content seriously.
Why you should use #Hashtags
Hashtags help people find others with similar interests. They can be used for business promotion or something more relaxing, such as hobbies. They can also be used to connect with people who are similar to you in places you’re not related to your business.
You can use hashtags in your social media strategy for many reasons. They are useful for a variety of things, including raising awareness for a cause or keeping up with trending topics and breaking news. Here are some more ideas about why you should be taking this avenue:
1. Engage with your followers more often with hashtags
Posting with hashtags lets people see your posts on a particular social media platform. And posting them to participate in conversations happening on that platform is also helpful. It can also help your posts be seen by more people. If you get your content in front of more people, it can lead to a boost in your brand’s social media engagement. This means more likes, shares, comments & new followers because you invested in reaching out to people.
2. Building brand awareness with branded hashtags
Creating a branded hashtag can be an effective way to promote your business, drive conversations and gain more visibility in moments when they’d otherwise go unnoticed. Using your company’s name or incorporating a tagline into hashtags can help capture the attention of users on Twitter or any other social media platform.
For instance, many brands start with their own video or photo challenges for the common public to participate using their brand hashtags. This not only brings greater engagement but a lot of limelight to the brand.
3. Adding context to a social media post
On social media, you often don’t have a lot of space for your caption. The standard is 280 characters on Twitter and Instagram and 10,000 characters on Facebook. Sometimes shorter is better when writing captions. Using a hashtag is a simple way to add more context to your text. It’s not the most efficient way of organizing content, but it’s still easy enough for anyone to use.
4. Let the TA find you through Hashtags
On LinkedIn and Instagram, users can follow hashtags as well as other users. Using a few popular hashtags can help new users find your brand easier. The way that Instagram auto-plays your posts is a great way to grow your audience.
5. For Sponsored Partnerships
This section is for brands and influencers looking to work with one another, and who want to find new ways of being active in the space. When you’re working with brands it’s important to alert your audiences that a piece of content is sponsored. You’ll want to make sure to follow the FTC’s detailed guidelines for influencers. Failure to comply can result in high fines for both the influencer and the brand. Don’t risk any delays to your project or damage to your brand.
Brands: always carefully review and accept influencer content to ensure there is no issue with false or misleading information. As for influencers, make sure that you are using a clear hashtag indicating that the content is sponsored in order to avoid any confusion.
To find hashtags that are specific to your brand, industry, and community, you’ll have to do some research. Here is a list of helpful tips when using hashtags on Instagram.
6. Keep an eye on the content of social media influencers and competitors
To do a competitive analysis on social media, start by gathering intel about your competitors and any relevant influencers in your niche. It’s important to track which hashtags your competitors are using and how much they’re using them in order to see what tactics they’re employing. This will help you learn which keywords they tend to use and how you can incorporate these into your own content strategy.
7. Find Trending Hashtags
As the importance of content marketing has grown, there is a greater demand for tools to help you get your social posts seen. RiteTag suggests trending hashtags for both immediate and long-term visibility and analysis. Hang tight or click “Get Report” to view a detailed report. RiteTag allows you to type in your social media caption and upload the photo that you’ll pair with your caption.
8. Social media listening tool
A social listening tool like Hootsuite lets your brand use search streams to identify the most popular hashtags and key phrases on each social network. This not only helps you understand how people are using your brand, but it can also help increase targeted followers organically.
9. Related hashtags
It’s a good idea to find related but more specific hashtags that work for your brand on social media. This strategy can help you build a deeper follower count and improve the quality of your feed. After clicking on an ellipsis, LinkedIn will indicate a notice about “hashtag recommendations” on the top left of the screen, which you can follow to see more.
10. Analyzing which hashtags were successful in past posts
It is a great idea to keep track of which hashtags you’ve used on past posts so that you can analyze them. If a specific hashtag gets popular, it would be useful to see how often you and your team use it in future posts. One of the best things you can do when it comes to content marketing is to create new and unique hashtags on a regular basis. If your current posts always get a lot of shares, make sure you also include those in your future posts so that people know where they can find them and what type of content you have.
Using hashtags on social media is a great way to share content with your audience and help them find the content they are looking for. This helps streamline your entire website/social media presence so folks can find what they are looking for quickly & easily. Here’s a short guide on how you can use hashtags on different social media platforms.
How to Use Hashtags on Twitter?
Using relevant hashtags on Twitter can increase your engagement with those followers, however, you should make sure to keep your talk even. Nobody wants to download an entire feed full of the trash before taking a chance on checking out that one tweet. One or two hashtags per tweet are great for starting conversations & gathering followers. When you search for a certain hashtag on Twitter, it will show your message up at the top of the list. This is great for visibility and getting involved in conversations that are trending to present your brand. You’ll also find new users interested in what you’re posting.
How to Use Hashtags on Facebook?
Using hashtags may help when you’re trying to get more exposure on Facebook. On Facebook, it’s generally recommended to use one or two hashtags. Use them sparingly and make sure they really add value to the post. Your post isn’t professional when you have a lot of typos, especially in the middle of your post. It will also annoy those who are reading it.
You can find relevant hashtags with the help of a search engine. It may also be helpful to check out your Top-performing Facebook posts and rewrite them with relevant hashtags. Spreading your content to similar audiences can help enlarge activity in your social media accounts and may also attract new followers interested in your product or service.
How to Use Hashtags on LinkedIn?
Although LinkedIn doesn’t have hashtags in articles yet, they are still useful on this platform like they are on any other. You’ll need to use hashtags within the post though so you can click through when someone else shares it. One to three hashtags are usually recommended for LinkedIn. Using hashtags on LinkedIn can get your posts in front of people outside your network. Let’s say you have 500 LinkedIn connections, posting without a hashtag limits your content to that network.
How to Use Hashtags on Instagram?
You should use hashtags on Instagram for maximum reach and engagement. Try a number of popular ones between 1-10, but never exceed 11. You can use up to 30 hashtags on a regular photo on Instagram. You don’t necessarily need to use that many, but they’re good to know that using more is acceptable here. This means you can experiment with different types of content and see what works best for you. The best social platform to use when looking for hashtags is Instagram. The most popular ones are used on posts, photos, and comments. You can also see which hashtags have those influencers or competitors using them frequently by checking the search box.
When choosing hashtags, make sure to use specific ones because the more specific you can get, the more likely you are to attract a targeted audience. Using capital letters helps clarify what you are trying to convey. Many businesses are using hashtags in their social media strategy, particularly those that focus on engaging parties with mutual audiences. The key is to know how your competition uses them & figure out the response they get. There’s a risk-reward factor involved here and it’s something that all businesses would do well to look into.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to hashtagging. The best strategy is to take the time to get familiar with who your audience is and when they like using certain hashtags. Beyond that, you will continue to learn what works (and what doesn’t) by using hashtags as part of your social media strategy and analyzing your results. A hashtag is a way of communicating with your followers and generating engagement that leads to attracting more customers. This can be done by using interactive hashtags, which are a great tool for increasing brand awareness, use of familiar hashtags, and obtaining new potential audience members.
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