With the brands and businesses focusing on optimizing their social media marketing strategy, knowing different hashtag marketing strategies will enhance your optimization process. Hashtags play a crucial role in increasing your brand reach and awareness on different social media platforms.
Earlier in 2007 when the hashtag was grabbing the user’s attention, using a topic relevant seed keyword as the hashtag was considered the best practice to promote any post. But today with the increase in the number of businesses promoted on social media platforms, relying on the popular hashtag will not offer you impactful results.
For that businesses should be aware of emerging trends among social media users. This way you can add hashtags in your post that are used by your audience. You can also make use of social listening and analytical tools to reconstruct your hashtag marketing strategy to get more impactful results.
Before using any hashtag in your post identifying the purpose of the hashtag so that you get goal-driven results. Each hashtag you use in your post will grab different types of audiences, identifying the goal of your post, and selecting the hashtag depending on your goal will help your post to reach the right audience. There are different types of hashtags that you can use depending on your goal.
In this article, we will be familiarizing you with different hashtag marketing strategies than you can use for your business to increase awareness and reach. Not only that but we will also help you in identifying why hashtag marketing is important for all types of businesses mainly small businesses.
If your social media marketing strategies are family to grab your audience attention during COVID19 pandemic then check our blog on Tips To Reevaluate Your Social Media Strategy During COVID19
What is Hashtag?
In simple words, Hashtag is used to categorize content and post on social media to make it easily discoverable. After twitter introduced the hashtag, it received a great response from users because it made it easy for them to filter and find the post on a particular topic.
Whether you are advertising your content or product, embedding a hashtag in your post increases its reach and awareness. The hashtag has become the foundation of the social media marketing that allows marketers to categorize and expand their post reach with the goal of gaining more followers and customers.
Without a hashtag, your post on social media is just like content without any targeted keyword. Just like marketers perform keyword research and embed it in their post to make it visible for a particular term in a search engine. Hashtags make it easy for non-followers to find the post depending on their searches.
What is Hashtag Marketing?
Hashtag Marketing is a way through which business pages in different social media accounts use hashtags strategically to increase their content awareness and reach. The hashtags obtained for hashtag marketing are based on target market research.
Embedding the right hashtags that are used by the user to find content can help you to gain more views, share, likes, and comments on your post. Not only that but using the right hashtag can also help you to get more sales.
Remember all the hasting you user in your post will not serve the same purpose for example users there are search for #social media marketing hashtag might be looking to gain knowledge about social media marketing. On the other hand, users searching for #social media marketing agencies might be looking to hire an agency for their social media marketing.
Identify the purpose of the hashtag and insert it so that it can reach the right audience. Now let’s determine why hashtag marketing is important for businesses?
Why Hashtag Marketing is Important for businesses?
Using hashtags in your post allows you to fall into the conversation that you are not part of or we can say it helps you to make your post visible in front of users that are searching for the content that relates to your post topic.
Whenever a person adds a hashtag into their social media post, it helps them to increase post engagement, boost brand awareness, and if your content is attracting user’s attention as well as solving their problem then it will encourage them to become your followers.
Each hashtag you include in your post is individually searchable. That makes it easy for your post to reach the right users. For example, if you are having a business page on social media marketing then using hashtags like #social media marketing, #instagrammarketing, #growthmarketing, #instagramforbusiness, #socialmediamarketingagency and more can help your post become more discoverable.
5 effective and valuable types of Hashtag for your marketing
1. Brand Hashtag
One of the important and most effective ways to use hashtags marketing is by creating your own brand hashtag. It is considered as the most unique hashtag that a brand or business can use to grow their business on different social media platforms.
These types of hashtags are short, unique, easily memorable, and more importantly, include words that describe brand/business. If you are facing difficulties in obtaining a brand hashtag then the best way to do it is by performing some research on hashtags that are useful for your brand by the user.
Once you successfully obtain your brand hashtag then you can start using those hashtags in any of your social media posts. Not only that but it also acts as the fallback hashtag that you can use in need of one on your post.
If your customer starts including your brand hashtag in their post then it will let the social community know what they think about your brand. In short, it will create a positive reputation for your brand. That’s why today brands and businesses have started to ask their followers and customers to use their brand hashtag in their posts.
You can also encourage your followers and your existing customers to use your brand hashtag. This way your post can become more engaging, you can gain more followers and your product will reach more potential customers.
The most effective way to ask your customers to use your brand hashtag is by running promotional or online content where you can ask users or followers to share your product and hashtags in return for existing prizes.
2. Contest/Campaign Hashtag
From the heading, you can determine that it is used as a part of marketing to promote a campaign or contest. But Contest/Campaign Hashtag is different from other types of hashtags because of its time limitation.
Contest/Campaign Hashtag has a start and end date. Brand and business create these types of hashtags to increase the reach of their campaign/contest. It is also used to track the contest entries and measure how many users are going to participate in the contest.
Contest/Campaign Hashtag includes brand name but it is recommended to use multiple hashtags to promote your content. You can also ask followers, to use the campaign hashtag with the content details in return they may get attractive prizes or incentives.
Before using campaign hashtags it is recommended to use Tools like social listening to know what your audience is talking about. After creating your campaign hashtag make sure to identify whether the hashtag you have created is already in use or not.
Do some research and use different hashtags, words combination in both lower case as well as uppercase to get the best campaign hashtag for your campaign. While creating your campaign hashtag avoid using new or off words/phrases.
3. Community Hashtag
Another widely used type of hashtag marketing is community hashtags which are utilized by many big businesses and brands to communicate and engage their existing as well as potential customers.
Community hashtag includes the brand name or unique product name in some form and basically focuses on community or lifestyle elements. If you wonder how community hashtags work then these types of hashtags are used by customers on their social media posts that feature your product and services. Then brand/business selects the post that uses their hashtag and feature on their business page feeds.
When a customer finds their post in your feed then it makes them feel that they are part of a large community and encourages them to use your hashtag in a future post. Community hashtag helps businesses to find more like-minded users that may relate to their products and services. If users start using your brand hashtag then it will help you to increase your brand awareness as well.
Today you will find many examples on different social media platforms where businesses and brands ask customers to share pictures on how they are using their products with the hashtag in their post. You can also create a separate community hashtag with your brand name that gives a personal touch to your customer.
4. Trending Hashtag
Another way to incense the post reach and engagement is by using the Trending hashtag that relates to your content in your post. Jumping into trending hashtag conversation makes your post visible in front of a large group of audiences. Make sure to offer more informative, educating, and more importantly original content that attracts viewer’s attention and encourages them to engage with your post.
This type of hashtag can give a boost to your post but when it comes to trending time then sometimes it is short lives and most of the time trending hashtags give your desired results. Including trending hashtags can give you impactful results but for that, you have to be attentive. If a hashtag is gaining popularity then you should be ready with your post the next day.
These types of hashtags have many benefits but there are downsides of this strategy too. It can be risky to include the trending hashtag without having proper knowledge of why the hashtag is trending. That’s why it is recommended to understand why the hashtag is trending before using it in your social media post.
If you find the trending hashing not fit for your post then its recommended not to include it in your post because sometimes rinks can bring more unpredicted trouble.
5. Local Hashtag
If your business or brand is operating in a particular location then it is recommended to use location-specific hashtags in your post. Many social media users use location hasting in their post which encourages them to search for people, businesses, brands, and products using the same local hashtag.
Whether you are targeting a specific country, city, or town, using location-specific hashtags enables your post to appear in front of many users that are performing local searches for a product or services. For example, if you are operating a local salon in particular then using a local hashtag tag in your post will offer more exposure to your business.
Not only that but users that are in need will also engage with posts that belong to their area. Local tagging improves your post views and impression. So if you are operating in local areas make sure to engage your local audience by including the local hashtags in your social media post.
6. Holiday Hashtag
Another way to increase the reach of your banda and make it engaging is by using Holiday Hashtag in your post. Holiday, season and activities related hashtags are considered as the most searched hashtags by users. Using these types of hashtags in your post can increase the awareness and reach of your brand and business.
Using Hashtags like #maytheofurthbewithyou, #Easter, #summer, #nationdountday and more can act as an opportunity to showcase your brand and grab users attention. But make sure the content you are using relates to hashtag and audience. If your brand is nowhere promoting or celebrating national pie day then it is recommended not to use it in your post.
Using Holiday, season, activity hashtag in your post can make your brand discoverable in front of the audience. Check out the holiday hashtag calendar prepared by sprout social.
7. Events Hashtags
Events hashtags are very much similar to campaign hashtags in terms of start and end date. Both the campaign and event hashtag run for a limited time but if your event happens once in a year and you promote that event entirely then you can create multiple hashtags that relate with your event in the long run.
On the other hand, there are events that have year specific hashtags so that it can be separated from previous year hashtags. Depending on your event goal you can have different hashtags for the long run as well as for a short duration.
Event hashtags can also be used to create conversations among the audience for that particular event. You can also ask your follower to share a post related to the event with a hashtag to get exciting prizes.
If you have organized or attended any popular event then you can use hashtags that relate to the event to engage users that attended the event. It can also help you to communicate with new users and convert them into followers.
Conclusion
Hashtags are considered an integral part of any social media campaign. No matter which social media platform your business or brand uses as a part of social media marketing strategy, identifying how to find and use the hashtag in your social media post will offer you more impactful results in terms of engagement and reach.
Above we have listed all the important types of hashtags that a brand can use in their social media posts to promote their content and product. If you are looking to list your post in the trending hashtags then it is important to keep eye on each trend and also it is recommended to include multiple hashtags in your post to increase its reach and engagement.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How do hashtags help businesses?
Hashtags are considered the most effective way to increase the awareness and reach of social media content. Many small and enterprise-level businesses use Hashtag to grow their online presence by expanding their reach and awareness. Hashtags make it easy for the user to discover and filter content depending on their requirement. If your content contains hashtag then the user may come across your account and content which can encourage them to become your follower.
2. What is the purpose of the hashtag?
In simple words, the hashtag helps the user to filter and discover content on a particular topic. It is a way to connect that helps your social media content to connect to specific topics, events, and themes. A topic can have multiple hashtags, including those hashtags in your post makes it easy for users to find and engage with your content. In 2007, the hashtag was launched by Twitter to filter and discover content but the good response from the user hashtags are used across different social media platforms.
3. How do you use Hashtags to promote your business?
If you are looking to promote your business on different social media platform using Hashtag then it is recommended to create and includes the below-mentioned type of hashtags in your post:
- Brand Hashtag
- Local Hashtag
- Trending Hashtag
- Community Hashtag
- Keyword Targeted Hashtag
- Holiday Hashtag
- Event Hashtag
4. Do hashtags increase followers?
Hashtags are considered as the best way to increase followers as it allows your post to grab many user’s attention. Including hashtags in your post can increase your engagement rate by 12.6% compared to pst without a hashtag. If you are looking to increase the reach of your post then make sure your post contains multiple hashtags. Once you post starts reaching a wide range of audience then you will automatically start gaining followers on your business pages.
5. How many hashtags should a business use?
It is recommended to use up to 30 hashtags in your social media post. Adding more than 30 hashtags will not show up in the searches. 30 is the maximum hashtag any brand can use but is it essential to use 30 hashtags in a post. No, you can use a minimum of 15 to 20 hashtags in your post to make it widely accessible.
6. What hashtag should I use for my business?
Most of the business commits a mistake by using popular hashtags for their business like #social media, #seo, and more. These types of hashtags you can use in your post but it cants your business hashtag. Your business hashtag should always include your product or business in it. Try creating hashtags that are easy to discover, include your brand name, and make your post reach the right audience. You can include trending hashtags but make sure your post relates to the hashtag you are using.
7. Is it better to put hashtags in comment?
If you wish to add the popular hashtags in the comment then it is recommended to use your caption to post the hashtag. If you think of including hashtags in your comment rather than the captions then your post will be buried in the hashtag feed. Yes, you can use the hashtag in the comment section; it works as fine as it works in the caption. But make sure you do it asap if you don’t want your post to get lost in hashtag feeds.
