Effective Ways To Use Hashtags To Build Your Brand

Hashtags are one of the most effective ways to expand your reach and grow engagement on social media. Yet despite being so commonly used, many small business owners and social media beginners don’t understand how to leverage them in their content strategy.

 

What Are Hashtags?

Known as the pound sign in a former life, the hashtag has made its way into social media and taken up residence. Hashtags are essentially links that categorize content under a particular topic. Think of them as groups of conversations that make it easier for people to find the content they want to read.  People interested in seeing content on content marketing can enter #contentmarketing into the search bar, for example, and see the content posted about that topic.

 

The Evolution of the Hashtag

It is believed that the use of the hashtag came from the Roman Empire as an abbreviation of the term libra pondo, which translates to “pound weight.” But it wasn’t until August 2007 when the first-ever hashtag stormed onto the social media scene when Chris Messina, a product designer, and internet consultant, tweeted using it on Twitter.  In October 2007, hashtags showcased their utility when Twitter users grouped relevant content together for tweets posted about the California wildfires.  By 2009, Twitter finally embraced the hashtag with the other social networks following.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Benefits of Hashtags

When used correctly, hashtags can expand your reach and increase audience engagement. In fact, a Twitter report revealed that brands using hashtags saw a 50% increase in engagement compared to tweets without them and are 55% more likely to be retweeted.

In addition, hashtags can help build your brand by finding your target audience. But, they can also help your target audience find you.  Utilizing tools like Twitter’s Advanced Search allows you to filter through millions of tweets to obtain targeted information such as seeing competitors’ tweets using certain keywords to finding tweets by people in a certain location.  Here are four simple steps to using Twitter’s advanced search:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hashtags Are Not Created Equal

Although hashtags started on Twitter, each social platform uses them differently.  Below summarizes how to effectively use hashtags on the larger networks:

Twitter:  Easy way to group relevant topics and conversations.  For maximum engagement, tweets should include no more than 2 hashtags and stay relevant to your messaging.

Instagram:  Popular way to group posts allowing users to quickly search keywords to discover content and follow others. Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post, but the ideal number to use is between 9 and 15.

Facebook:  Contrary to many Instagram and Twitter profiles, most Facebook profiles are kept private preventing hashtags from being discoverable to those outside of their “friend” community.  Because of this, most hashtags you do see belong to influencers or brands. If you still want to include hashtags on your Facebook posts, keep the number you use between 1-2 per post.

Pinterest:  Pinterest allows up to 20 hashtags on pins.  Users typically read descriptions first, so hashtags should be found at the end of the pin description. You can also add hashtags to board names as well.

LinkedIn:  Hashtags are a relatively recent re-addition to LinkedIn.  Like Twitter and Instagram, keywords are searchable using the hashtags.  This gives posts and articles a greater chance of being seen by LinkedIn users outside your network.  1-2 hashtags are ideal for LinkedIn posts and should be kept professional.

 

Using the Right Hashtag

We’ve covered the benefits of hashtags and how they work on individual platforms. But, using the wrong hashtags can diminish your efforts and hurt your brand. There are several ways you can identify relevant hashtags to optimize your social media content:

See What’s Trending: With tools like RiteTag, Hashtagify, and All-Hashtag, just to name a few, identify the best hashtags to use to maximize your social media reach

Find Out What Influencers are Doing:  Follow and research influencers for insight into which hashtags they are frequently using.  Tools, like the ones mentioned above, can show you the top influencers for specific keywords.

Be Specific:  Take the time to do the research and determine the right hashtags for your brand.  The more specific you are the more targeted your audience will be typically resulting in better engagement.

 

Including hashtags as a part of your social media strategy is more than just using catchy words.  It’s incorporating best practices to reach and engage your target audience and to build your brand.  As with all marketing and social strategies, evaluate and re-evaluate to ensure everything is aligning with your business goals.

Still have questions? Reach out.