Welcome to the wonderful world of #socialmediamarketing and #brandawareness through the power of hashtags.
As social media marketing evolves, we are exposed to so many ways to market and promote our brands online. When it comes to increasing brand awareness, there is one symbol that stands out the most – the iconic #. How can a simple symbol bring your audience to you? We’re doing a deep dive into understanding the power of #hashtags in social media.
What are hashtags?
To put it simply, a hashtag is a word or phrase followed by the # key. It’s a tool that can be used to make your content discoverable to your audience by using relevant keywords or phrases.
Hashtags group your content under a category topic that enables people to find you more easily. The growing popularity of this tool has allowed marketers to reach a wide target market and generate awareness for their brands and campaigns.
A popular example is Coca-Cola’s #ShareACoke campaign which received 160,000 Twitter mentions and 740 million impressions when it launched in 2011. What’s impressive is that the hashtag is still going strong even today!
Why are hashtags so important? (And why do they work?)
They are extremely important because they expose your brand to your target audience and help them to find your brand easier. Here are some of the reasons why:
Brand Awareness and Visibility
Once you find hashtags (words or phrases) relevant to your brand, you will be easily visible to your target market. Think of them as keywords – the more relevant to your brand, the more you will come up in the search results. Take your time to do the research. While you might use more popular ones, you want to be mindful of not getting lost in the noise of content within the platforms.
Promotion and Engagement
Hashtags are excellent for promotional campaigns. If you create a catchy hashtag and entice your customers and followers to use it, you will automatically generate new leads and get more eyes on your brand. It’s almost like a word-of-mouth tactic where if even five of your customers use the hashtag, they will intrigue each of their followers who can further share it with their unique followers. The reach potential is endless.
Understand the Competition
As you figure out how to get to the top of the search with relevant hashtags, you can find your competitor’s profiles through the hashtags they use and analyze what they are doing that works. This is extremely helpful as you learn how your competitors are using each social media platform to their advantage. Every platform is different – what works on Instagram might not be the answer for Twitter. Understanding how your competition navigates this space can be extremely helpful for your brand as you implement your hashtag strategy.
Spread Awareness of Activism
If your company has philanthropy or supports a particular cause, hashtags are an easy way to raise awareness and gather support. Companies have started to take a stance on issues important to them and customers that share the same values will help spread the word to their followers, generating buzz and support in a magnified way.
What are the different types of hashtags?
With tons of different types, it’s important to know which ones are right for your business and when you need to use each type of hashtag.
Brand
Brand hashtags are unique to your brand and your brand only. They are relevant and will easily help your audience find your business on social media. An example includes KitKat’s enigmatic #Haveabreak which they converted into a hashtag from their slogan. No one needs an explanation of which brand that hashtag belongs to, and your company needs to strive for that status. Your brand’s hashtag should be short, catchy, and searchable. These are usually permanent, so make sure you come up with a good one!
Campaign
Hashtags for campaigns are similar to brand tags except they are relevant to the campaign you are running. For example, if you are trying to promote a discount code or a new spring collection launch, the hashtags you generate will spread awareness for the message you are trying to send related to a specific event for a limited period. For example, Dominos started a #TweetforTreats hashtag campaign on Twitter to entice customers to tweet with that hashtag to get a discount on their pepperoni pizza order.
Descriptive
If your business sells flowers, for example, you would use descriptive hashtags such as #flowers #florist #flowerarrangement and #bouquet in your posts. These describe your content and help to put your business out there in terms of what your brand is all about. They will help you reach a very wide audience, some even outside your target, and can be used across all platforms.
Trending
With a trending hashtag, you can get your brand out there simply by using that hashtag with your posts. For example, if #bread is trending and you own a bakery, you should include that hashtag more when you post on social media during the time #bread is trending. The only drawback of trending hashtags is to understand the context it’s trending as you don’t want to end up offending a group if they are trying to promote a social cause or news story.
Location
Location hashtags like #LosAngeles are a great way to reach a local and global audience. While using these, you can increase awareness to your audience in that location or people interested in visiting that location. These interested customers can then like and save your posts for future purchases or visits.
Community
A great way to bring a community together or connect with people who are part of the same community, community hashtags such as #InternationalStudentsinLA can bring a group of people together and create engagement within the group. This community will be able to relate to your brand and will be interested in your content, and bring others to the group because they can be a part of something with like-minded individuals.
How to use hashtags on social media
Do your research
Research is imperative to a successful hashtag strategy. You need to make sure that you understand your niche and come up with hashtags that are relevant and unique to your brand and offerings. As you conduct hashtag research, keep the following in mind:
- Make sure they’re popular. Just like SEO-optimized keywords, you need to find ones that people actually search for so that they can find your brand.
- They should be relevant. As mentioned, if your business is a bakery, you do not want to use hashtags related to garage tools.
- Study your competitors! They will help you figure out what works and how they target their audience.
Put together a strategy
Every goal needs to have a strategy behind it. Avoid using hashtags simply, without a proper strategy behind it. Creating a content marketing strategy will help you and your team stay consistent and on-brand at all times. Your strategy will outline the way you will connect with others, connect your messages, and how you will run campaigns. This document will finally help you reach your goals in an organized way.
Know the right number to use on each platform
How much is too much? As you figure out the relevant hashtags for your brand, keep in mind that you don’t use too many in your captions. After all, you’re not trying to spam every follower you have. Every social media platform has specific rules as to how many hashtags can be used on each post and where you place them to give you more visibility.
Oh, the good old Instagram and their ever-changing algorithms. Instagram is becoming more SEO-focused with their poses and the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, has maxed hashtags to 30 per post and should be included in the caption, not the comment section for higher searchability.
The optimal number of #: 20-30
Hashtags on Facebook can be used on your written posts or in the comments section. As more people are shifting to private channels, leverage private groups to use your tags to generate awareness. According to HootSuite, you can monitor your brand’s hashtags and see which public profiles are joining in the conversation. All you need to do is use the URL facebook.com/hashtag/_____ and include the keyword you want to search at the end.
The optimal number of #: 2 – 5
An amazing platform to promote your brand on, your Pinterest hashtag strategy should also be very SEO focused. Try not to use more than 20 when you write your description of your pin. A fun feature of using Pinterest on your mobile device is that you will get hashtag selections when creating a new pin.
The optimal number of #: 2 – 8
Tik Tok
The best way to use hashtags on TikTok is to find the ones that are trending. Use them within your caption and make sure to mix it up with popular, trending, and awareness.
The optimal number of #: 2 – 5
Youtube
To avoid being flagged as spam, don’t use more than 15 hashtags. You can add them in the title as well as descriptions and will become hyperlinks so people can search for relevant content.
The optimal number of #: 2 – 3
If done right, hashtags can help your brand generate buzz and allow for your brand to be discovered on social media platforms. Make sure you continue to do your research and continuously update your hashtags to stay relevant. While they have been around for a while, they can prove to be of extreme help in finding your target audience with a simple word or phrase.
