Every marketer worth their salt knows how crucial hashtags can be for their digital marketing strategy. In case you have forgotten the value of these little additions, here’s a primer on how hashtags play an important role in social media.
- Hashtags are a great way of labeling and finding niche social media content.
- Hashtags make all your content easily discoverable.
- Hashtags allow social media users to find and engage with content related to common themes or interests.
- Hashtags also propel content to reach more people and be discovered by users all across the world.
Since hashtags increase the reach and engagement of content, they are a great way to increase traffic on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms. To celebrate the importance of these humble little words, we’ve put together a guide that’ll help you build a successful social media presence.
These easy-to-follow hashtag use guidelines will help you ensure that you use hashtags most efficiently and get the most results out of your social media marketing efforts.
But, before we dive into that, we have something exciting that’ll make using hashtags way easier and more effective.
Our free trending hashtag calendar kit is a one-spot destination for your 2023 Hashtag calendar. It contains the ultimate guide for social media marketing hashtags, a 2023 calendar with holidays, hashtags, and content ideas, and design templates for the whole year. Never miss out on exciting upcoming holidays or national holidays again.
Coming back to the main topic, here’s how to use hashtags for your social media posts.
1. Keep It Simple and Relevant
When choosing a hashtag for your 2023 holiday calendar, it is essential to make sure that you pick something people are searching for and can easily remember.
There are lots of hashtags scattered in the social media universe. Using a hashtag that is long and difficult to spell or pronounce will probably not give you a good result. However, an unclear, never-used, or generic hashtag will also not get the results you want.
Your hashtag should be short, precise, and simple to spell. It should give your audience a clear idea about the topic of the conversation.
The key is finding out topics that are relevant to your audience. You need to find the hashtags that are already being discussed and pertinent to your content and company. Social media hashtags help categorize your content, let people follow a trend, and even help you engage with a community.
Have a look at this cute Lay’s post on Mother’s Day. They have used a relevant hashtag to give a well-deserved shoutout to moms.
2. Utilize Trending Hashtags
A trending hashtag is a hashtag that has become very popular. You must have heard people talking about what’s “trending now.”
Sometimes, it refers to the hashtags currently popular or is the most talked about at a particular time. Often, popular hashtags are centered on the major news topics of the world. When you see a trend that relates to your business, engage with it by using that tag.
Using a trending hashtag in your content update can get your message across to a much larger audience. More people can see your updates rather than just your fans and followers.
Also, a trending hashtag is a great way to increase a brand’s visibility. Before you use a hashtag in your social media post, make sure it adds value to your existing conversation. If your post does not add value, it is likely to be ignored and lost in an ocean of posts.
If you have a genuinely informative post, more people will re-share it, increasing your overall brand awareness. Make use of the best social media automation tools to automate your posts with hashtags on social. Refer to the national day calendar or any holiday calendar 2023 to plan branding campaigns to get more traction. After all, consistency is the key!
Here’s how multiple businesses are using the same hashtag, #Burgerday, to showcase their offerings.
How to Use Trending Hashtags?
- Be the first to use trending tags to get more exposure for your content and brand.
- Find trending Twitter and Instagram hashtags.
- Use Hashtag analytics & monitoring sites, such as Hashtags.org, Trendsmap, Hashtagify, etc.
- Use niche-trending hashtags to connect and build relationships with your targeted market.
3. Don’t Overuse Hashtags
Hashtags are an essential part of social media strategy. They give your brand more exposure so you can spread the word about your product to a massive audience. Besides, when you use it multiple times on different channels, people will easily remember your hashtag.
However, each social media platform has its own befitting hashtags frequency and crossing it might lead to lesser engagement. In fact, using 10+ hashtags can reduce engagement by 68.2%, as inferred from the Social Baker study.
- Twitter: Because of character count restrictions, avoid using more than 2 hashtags per tweet for best engagement.
- Facebook: Use 2 hashtags on Facebook; one popular hashtag and one custom hashtag for your brand.
- Instagram: It allows up to 30; however, keep it to no more than 9 per post for better engagement.
- LinkedIn: There is no constraint on the usage of hashtags. But it has been recommended to limit it to a maximum of 5. Otherwise, LinkedIn Algorithm could mark your posts as spam.
- Pinterest: Use 2 hashtags on Pinterest to help pinners to find relevant content.
- TikTok: Use 4-5 hashtags on TikTok to boost your reach on the platform.
4. Search the Hashtag Before You Use It
Check the respective social media platform to ensure that your hashtag isn’t used for the wrong reason. Also, ensure that you don’t choose a hashtag that can be interpreted negatively, or another brand uses the hashtag specifically for their promotion.
When you use hashtags correctly, they help create online conversation, increase brand awareness, and ultimately lead to a sales spike. So keep your audience in mind while figuring out the best hashtags.
See if other people are using it and what they are saying. Say you want your tweet to stand out, then tweeting on a negative hashtag might not be the best way to do it. So it’s better to research and save yourself from any unprecedented faux pas.
You can also use Twitter analytics tools to determine which hashtags worked the best for you and which ones didn’t.
5. Be Specific and Unique
As a marketer, you want to reach your community using a hashtag, especially during special events and Twitter chats.
However, if you want others to join in on the conversation, you need to engage the audience by using unique hashtags. You can’t use generic hashtags, such as #marketing or #seo, and expect people to retweet your post.
Nowadays, people incorporate unique, trending, and branded hashtags with better social media marketing tips to get more engagement on their social updates.
In this example, KitKat has used its iconic tagline #HaveABreak to initiate an engaging conversation thread.
Undoubtedly, hashtags are a powerful tool for brand marketing on social media. For getting great results, you need to use a hashtag that is carefully selected and tactically utilized.
Although the uses of hashtags differ depending on the channel, you can increase their performance by following the best practices. As a marketer, you also need to stay updated on social media’s ever-evolving features and constantly changing user preferences. Every new year brings innovations and new features. Try to be proactive and keep yourself well informed.
6. Create Brand Engagement
Hashtags have the fantastic ability to connect your brand with many famous and incredibly visible topics.
Use of the right hashtags will drive new viewers to your social media and allow you to engage with them. When you use hashtags carefully, it helps you expand your reach to targeted users and improve customer relations. The more comfortable your followers feel with your brand, the more likely they are to interact with you on social media.
You don’t want to ignore them, but it’s unnecessary to use hashtags while conversing with your followers. Also, you don’t need to use a hashtag in every post either.
However, it is vitally important to remember that you should not use hashtags while responding to someone. Whether it’s a re-tweet or a reply, avoid using these characters when they are not required. Don’t include it in your customer dialogue.
Adding keywords within your hashtags isn’t enough to enhance your online presence. You need to ensure your hashtags are conversational and unique. This effective use of hashtags plays an essential role in an effective social media marketing strategy for your brand.
Also, growing engagement requires consistency. You got people hooked by leveraging the trending hashtags; now, you advance that relationship with more relevant posts at more appropriate times.
