If you’re an SME owner looking to improve the visibility of your posts and increase sales, consider using hashtags to market your business. When used correctly, relevant social media hashtags can make your business content easily discoverable and attract more audience.
Although hashtags were first widely used on Twitter, they have become an effective marketing tool on all other social media. You can now use hashtags on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Linkedin, and other platforms.
Hashtags are like tools for free promotion. However, you can only tap into that potential when you use hashtags effectively.
This article will cover all you need to know about hashtags and how to use hashtags to market your business. You will also get tips to help you get the best results from using hashtags to market your business.
Let’s get started.
Contents
Hashtags are used to index keywords or topics on social media. They are written with the Hash (#) symbol followed by the keyword without any space. When you click on a hashtag, you can view all the posts tagged with that hashtag from anywhere on Instagram/Twitter.
People use hashtags to filter information relevant to them. You can reach your target audience with the use of specific hashtags.
Hashtags increase the visibility of your post. Posts with hashtags receive up to 12.6% more engagement when compared to posts without any.
Make sure you add hashtags to all your posts on Instagram, including your Instagram stories.
Banned hashtags are hashtags that have been flagged or disabled on Instagram. They are disabled because they are against the community guidelines.
Therefore, banned hashtags are of no help to your marketing. In fact, they may reduce your posts’ visibility because social media algorithms might flag your post as a spam post.
Banned hashtags can be simple or supposed innocent keywords like #elevator or #humpday. That is why you must be extra careful when adding hashtags to your posts.
To get your audience involved, you can use a branded hashtag to start a conversation/trend. A branded hashtag is a hashtag phrase used on social media that is specific to your brand.
Branded hashtags are usually specific to just your business. They may or may not include your brand name. For example, you can create a branded hashtag for a challenge you’re organising for the audience/customer.
Your branded hashtag can also be a way for your customers to tag and market your brand in their posts. An example of that is the Adidas brand hashtags – #Adidas and #Adidasoriginal.
All social media platforms have different hashtag rules that guide them. For example, Twitter recommends you use no more than 2 hashtags in your Tweet, while on Instagram, you can add as high as 10.
Ensure you’re informed and follow these rules/tips. Avoid adding too many hashtags to your posts so they don’t look spammy.
Adding many hashtags to your caption can make it look cluttered and spammy. Instead, post your hashtags as the first comment on your post. That way, you can avoid adding too many hashtags to your posts making them look clustered.
Yes, you can get the analysis of your hashtags’ performance. Most in-built social media analytics tools like Instagram insights offer some statistics about your hashtag performance.
However, the statistics are limited, and you might require more details. Hashtag analytics tools can give more information.
Measuring the performance of hashtags you’ve used before can help you determine which ones are performing well. From that report, you can select hashtags driving the most reach, comments, and likes. This will, in turn, help you decide on hashtags you should continue using.
We’ve talked about what hashtags are and to use them effectively for your marketing. However, why are hashtags useful to market business?
When you add a hashtag to your post, the post automatically becomes visible on the hashtag page. This helps new audiences looking for content in these categories easily discover your content.
The right hashtags can deliver your content straight to your target audience, even without prior interaction.
For example, a fitness brand on Instagram can use #fitness, #workout, #gymwear, #keepingfit. People interested in fitness can easily find their posts by clicking on those hashtags.
In the same way, clicking on #Mondaymotivation shows all the posts tagged with the hashtag on Linkedin.
Users can follow hashtags on certain social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn. When users follow hashtags, they can view posts tagged with those hashtags even if they’re not following the owner of the posts.
Using trendy hashtags makes your posts visible on that topic and help you take part in conversations. That can help you boost your engagement and get new followers.
Funny, witty, or insightful comments can catch people’s attention and lead to many likes, comments, and mentions. The more engagement you get, the more you build your brand on that social media.
Hashtags are also used to show support for social issues like equality, mental health awareness, and stand against racism.
For example, the hashtags #internationalwomenday, #IWD, #EachforEqual, were used across social media to show support for women on women day.
The hashtag #standagainstracism is used to support racism. Hashtags like these are usually created to show support for social causes. You can use these hashtags to show your support for social justice.
If you’re not using relevant hashtags for your posts, then your hashtags are almost useless.
So, how do you get relevant hashtags?
The first point of getting relevant hashtags are the social influencers in your industry/niche. Remember, their followers are your target audience, so the hashtags they use are relevant to you as well.
Check several influencers in your niche and see what hashtags they are using to engage their followers. Pick the hashtags relevant to your brand and try to incorporate them when necessary.
Another excellent place to get relevant hashtags is from your competitors. Your competitors are also targeting the same audience as your brand. Carry out competitor’s research and analysis.
Looking for an easier way to carry out your hashtag research?
Hashtags tools are designed to help you find the most relevant hashtags for your content. You can also filter out banned hashtags with the help of these tools. Furthermore, with these tools, you can get more information on hashtags like their popularity.
RiteTag gives hashtag suggestions for both text and image. It generates hashtags suggestions based on your content that will help your post visibility immediately.
The “Get Report” gives you a detailed analysis of each hashtag suggestion, including the rate at which people use the hashtag.
Furthermore, you can integrate the tool with several other social media platforms and tools, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Later, Buffer, and HubSpot. With this feature, you can get hashtags suggestions from your social media account or your management tools.
With Hashtagify, you can search and find the best hashtags on Twitter and Instagram for your brand. You can explore popularity, correlation, and trends.
You can also track your hashtags and examine the performance of your hashtags as well, and can also download the pdf of the full analysis.
The tool will also give you related hashtags to your keyword. You can also do much more with the tool, like getting keyword variants and seeing the top tweets.
With Hootsuite listening features, you can search streams to discover the most relevant hashtags across social media platforms. The tool works with all platforms and is easy to use.
You can use the search streams feature to get the most popular and effective streams. You can also set up different streams to suit your workflow.
Furthermore, you can monitor and track your hashtags with analytics tools.
While most tools are great for finding hashtags popular on just a particular platform at a time, Tagboard makes it possible to find popular and relevant hashtags across multiple platforms.
It works by showing you the top posts in your niche across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, and more. So instead of showing you relevant hashtags, it shows you the posts with the most popular hashtags.
Although, the tool doesn’t have features to help you discover new hashtags relevant to your niche/content. It gives you an idea of how competitors and influencers are using your relevant hashtags.
If you're looking for more hashtags tools to consider, check out our article for the top 3 Instagram hashtags tools that your business should be using.
Instead of using generic popular hashtags, related hashtags in line with your business help you narrow down further while still taking advantage of that popularity.
You can find related hashtags in the Explore section of Instagram. When you search for a popular hashtag in the search bar, the related hashtags are shown above the “Recent” and “Top” tab.
You can get related hashtags on LinkedIn by clicking on the popular hashtag. After clicking on a hashtag, select the three ellipses on top. Click on the “discover new hashtag.”
You can use the search tab to get related hashtags on Facebook. Just type the hashtag in the search bar, and you’ll get more related hashtags.
To get related hashtags on Twitter, use the search tab. Just type the hashtag in the search tab.
You can use the trending tab to get the latest trending hashtags on Twitter.
You can use the Discover tab at the bottom of the app page to search for hashtags on Tiktok. The Discover page will also show you a preview of videos tagged with the trending hashtags.
To get related hashtags, search for the hashtag with the search bar at the top of the screen. It will show hashtags related to your hashtag of interest like this:
Hashtags are powerful tools you can use for discovery and engagement across all social media platforms. Apart from discovery and engagement, hashtags can also be a vital part of building your social media presence.
Using branded hashtags and content can help you connect with a new audience while keeping your followers engaged.
However, not using hashtags properly can make your post look spammy and damage the very brand presence you’re trying to build.
How can you avoid that?
Ensure you’re using relevant hashtags in your niche. You shouldn’t just add any hashtags for the sake of it. Make sure they are useful to your business content and can help you connect to your target audience.
Finally, if you still need help with crafting a winning hashtag, you may want to engage the services of Heroes of Digital. We have the best social media consultant in Singapore with over half a decade worth of experience to help you design a winning hashtag strategy to market your business with the best results.
Get your free digital marketing consultation today!
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