Shannon Mugford
How to Use Hashtags and Get Results
Hashtags, to some people, may seem irritating and spammy on every Instagram post, but what they are forgetting is how beneficial they are for all businesses, big or small. By increasing the engagement with potential customers through hashtagging which ultimately, categorises the content you are producing on social media, you are opening helping your content reach even more people from your target audience. Did you know that 75% of people on social media use hashtags? (That’s right, we’re not telling porkies here!) But the question is, why aren’t you?
To utilise hashtags fully, you need to completely understand how hashtags work and which ones can be used to your advantage if you want them to generate results such as retweets, likes and high click-through rates. By taking the following advice on board, soon you will be creating engaging content that is effective in its direction towards your target demographic. Helping you gain more activity and in turn, more sales. Go on, do it for the insta.
Fetch is Never Going To Happen
To start with, you want to choose hashtags that people are actively searching for as generic hashtags will generate little results or engagement. “Stop trying to make fetch happen, it’s not going to happen.” Instead, find hashtags that your audience can relate to and ones that will instantly categorise your content; ensuring that people who are interested in your business can find them easily. Hashtags that follow a trend are easy to remember, and they can help you engage with a community of people who are interested in the same topics, products or services as you.
It’s Time to Branch Out
Forget just Insta, we are venturing out huns. By using hashtags across multiple social media platforms, you can give your brand more exposure in a broader audience; allowing people to easily remember your brand by identifying specific hashtags that you consistently use over all of your socials.
Most platforms utilise hashtags so there are already well-known guidelines that businesses should follow in order to gain the most engagement and results for them. On Twitter, you should use no more than two to three hashtags per post; this is due to the character limitations and to avoid your content looking “spammy”. Whereas, on Facebook, two hashtags is recommended, with one popular hashtag and one brand-related hashtag. Are you taking note?
Google Plus utilises hashtags to categorise their content, helping readers to find and join a conversation about a particular topic. For the best engagement on Instagram, it is recommended that you use no more than eleven hashtags if you’re an established brand, despite the app allowing up to thirty hashtags per post. The thirty hashtag limit is only helpful to those accounts that have a small following as the hashtags need to be able to reach as many users as possible to be seen. Try to think of it as not spam, but rather, a list of cute words.
Finding the right mixture of hashtags for your brand’s channels will probably take some A/B testing as it is different for every industry, but once you have it right, you’ll see a significant improvement in your content’s engagement.
Don’t Kill Your Vibes
Hold up, before you get started… Make sure that the hashtags that you are going to use aren’t already in association with negative connotations or conversations- this could have an adverse effect on your businesses social image. So, please don’t kill your vibes. As well as this, you want to check if another company has already adopted specific unique hashtags that you are about to use as their own for their promotions and campaigns, as this could confuse your audience and even deliver them to a competitor.
To be one step ahead of the game, double-check the number of people on average using certain hashtags that you believe may be popular; all you need to do is search for popular or specific tags each day on Twitter so that you can see how many people have tweeted them in the past hour or so. By doing this, you can create more engagement for your online conversations and therefore, increase your brands awareness. Hella yes.
Be a Flamingo In a Flock of Pigeons
Reach your target demographic and create a community of people that are interested in your brand, products and services by using unique and specific hashtags in your social posts. You need to stand out from the crowd guys, so to do this, always engage in conversations that give you a chance to advertise your brand. You want to catch people’s eyes, and by choosing Twitter Chats and hashtags related explicitly to your brands values and services, you can increase your chances of a successful conversation and fingers crossed, a conversion. Dollar Dollar bills y’all. The moral of the story is, the more relevant the hashtags, the more potential for engagement.
Make it your mission to keep yourself well-informed on current hashtag trends that are related to your brand, so that you can utilise them in your social posts – the more specific, the better!
Tweet Tweet
Twitter Chats are online events that often last between one and two hours, which focus an entire conversation around a chosen topic. Even though a lot of politics and cat chat (yay!) are often spoken about, you can also find relative chats surrounding your industry. These are a great way for you to network and build relationships with your audience; who may then develop into potential returning customers for your business. It’s time to sweet talk.
Engagement is usually boosted throughout Twitter Chats as users who don’t follow you can still see your tweets and are more likely to like and share your content as they have specifically clicked onto the conversation; meaning it is related to something they are interested in.
Hashtags can really help to shoot your social channel into new circles; overall, hashtags are essential for increasing your brands awareness and categorising the content of your social media so that potential customers can clearly see what your business values are and what you sell. To make sure that you use them correctly, focus on using short, memorable and targeted hashtags that are still popular and are likely to reach a larger audience. #youknowwhattodo
For more information and advice on utilising hashtags for your business, contact Cheshire Cat Marketing today on 01606 270513 or through our website.
