Social media has been rendered an integral part of a company’s marketing strategy ever since the internet and technology have taken a front seat. With more than 67% of the world’s population now on social media, it only fits that these platforms have become the most popular means of advertising for a company. Today, even Fortune 500 companies like Walmart and Amazon rely on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to get noticed by a bigger audience. Do you know the key to their social media marketing success?
The #hashtags of their brand name is one out of many things that these stalwarts have tried using to increase their popularity. The brainchild of Twitter, Hashtags became a huge trend for promoting pictures on Instagram. But with time, businesses have revealed how great a way it is to use brand hashtags to bring your business in the forefront and make it more discoverable. By incorporating hashtags into your social content or even on your website, you expand your reach, thus getting better leads and better sales numbers. Think it this way: If social media marketing is the train that takes you to your goal, hashtags are the fuel that helps the train run faster.
But like every social media marketing tactic, you need to know how to use hashtags to your advantage. So here are 5 ways you can use your brand hashtag for a successful run.
5 Ways to Get Better Visibility with your Brand’s Hashtag
If used appropriately, hashtags can increase your brand’s awareness and make your content more visible via more social shares. Here are five proven ways you can use your brand’s hashtag to make your social media strategy yield the desired results.
- Keep it simple yet unique
While choosing a hashtag, you must pick a tag that people can easily remember. While your brand’s hashtag would primarily mean your brand’s name, you don’t need to limit it to just that. There are likely to be several more businesses with a version of your brand name. So, how do you stand out? Check what Emilia Eckhart, digital marketing head of assignment help brand MyAssignmenthelp.com, has to say. “Our name clashes with several online academic writing brands. To make our hashtag stand out, we searched for the best hashtags of our niche industry and incorporated them both for a unique something.”
Now while at it, make sure that the hashtag isn’t too long or difficult to spell. Your users might forget your brand name if it is too complicated to pronounce. Keep it short, precise and clear. Your audience should get a clear idea about what your brand deals in after seeing the hashtag. So I suggest that you keep the product/services you offer in the brand hashtag.
- Search the hashtag before applying it
The brand hashtag you take up will be your company’s long-term sidekick. So you must make sure that you do not have to change it midway. Check through social media networks to ensure that the hashtag has no offensive meaning, or isn’t being used for the wrong reasons. Especially, make sure that your hashtag strategy does not clash with the ones that are being used by your competitors, so that your promotion does not benefit them.
You can also check profiles of the influencers within your brand’s niche for better insights into what type of hashtags are working. For more relevancy and accuracy, you can also use tools like Hashtagify.me to search for different keywords throughout Twitter and Instagram and see how the hashtags have ranked.
Also, READ: Hashtag Education to getting your Education System Up and Running for more insights.
- Utilize trending hashtags
You can shoot up to the top of a search results list if you go “trending”. You may have already heard people talking about what’s “trending now”. But the question is – How do you become trending? Hashtags are your way out here too. Keep track of the most talked hashtags since they are continuously changing. Often, hashtags change as per the things happening around the world. It may not always relate to your business.
But you must always remember that content is the king. Just make sure that the hashtag adds value to the content you post along with it. If the post fails to add value, your efforts might go down the drain even when paired with the top trending hashtags. Even if the post is about an environmental issue or a global matter, a truly informative post is bound to get more social shares. And with more social shares, you will be able to get your messages across to a much larger audience, thus being able to connect more as a brand.
- Use hashtag on multiple social media networks
Although the inception of Hashtags rests traces to Twitter, now all social media platforms support hashtags. And you know what more hashtags imply, right? When you use your brand’s hashtag multiple times across different channels, you increase your chances of visibility. And the more your audience sees your brand hashtag, the more they remember your company.
However, there are certain things that you need to remember while using hashtags across several channels.
- For Twitter: Do not use more than two hashtags per tweet since there is a character-count restriction of 120 to 140 characters.
- Facebook: While Facebook has no such restrictions, it is better not to crowd your content with hashtags. So, it is better that you keep it to 2 – your custom brand hashtag and a popular one from your niche.
- Instagram: Instagram permits up to 30 hashtags. But you don’t want a paragraph of them. Try not to exceed 12 hashtags per post for more engagement.
- Pinterest: Since hashtags can be used as a category of search, you need to use the best two hashtags for your brand. This will make your posts more findable.
- Don’t overuse hashtags
Too many hashtags can make your readers and followers feel like you are spamming them. It is best that you keep it minimal rather than putting an unreadable paragraph of them. While you may find several hashtags that are relevant to your brand, you need to prioritize. Choose the ones that are most engaging so as not to crowd your social media posts. My suggestion is that you simply stick to your brand hashtag only if you want your company’s name to gain the most traction. Apart from your brand name hashtag, you can settle for a maximum of two hashtags for each of your social media posts if you want to increase engagement. Additionally, my advice is that you do not use them in every single post so that your social media users do not feel that you are trying too hard to promote your brand.
Parting Words:
Undoubtedly, hashtags are one of the most powerful tools today that you can use for brand marketing. But it is not as easy as it may sound. You need to be careful while choosing a brand hashtag and ensure that it fits well with the goals of your company. As an entrepreneur or a marketer, you must stay updated on the ever-changing features of social media that constantly changes according to user preferences. Try to keep yourself well informed about the trending features of hashtags to make the most out of this “cool kid” of social media.
Are you using hashtags already on your posts? What do you think of them? Let us share your hashtag insights by leaving a comment below.
Author Bio:
Ammie Jackson is a digital marketing analyst who is associated with the online assignment brand AllEssayWriter.com. She is a programmer by passion, who has also built the Harvard reference generator tool for the brand. Besides being an active blogger, she loves to travel around the world.
