Twitter has become the place where hashtags were originally born, simply as a way to organize information. Today they are used in all social networks, of course, with their own characteristics, and marketers even came up with a special concept of hashtag marketing and hashtag strategies.
However, the main rules for using hashtags remain the same for all social networks – they should correspond to the topic of the post as much as possible, and your target audience should use them to search for new posts. Therefore, in this article, we decided to figure out how to use trending hashtags on Twitter to increase the coverage and involvement of users.
The Main Feature of Twitter When Using Hashtags
Unlike Instagram, where you can use about 10 hashtags under the post, plus sew a large number of tags in the comments, Twitter recommends using no more than two hashtags. This means that you will have only two attempts to make the right choice, so the presence of at least one trending and suitable hashtag is mandatory.
Start from Researching the Most Relevant Hashtags
Obviously, having only two attempts (as a general rule), it would be categorically incorrect to use random hashtags in the hope that they will work. Therefore, before making a decision, it is necessary to conduct a study. There are four ways to do this.
Twitter Itself
The very first and obvious way to search for trending hashtags is your personal account. Twitter gives you the opportunity to view recommendations based on your posts, and the posts of those you follow. As a result, you get a small selection of trending topics and hashtags that you can also use in your posts.
Hashtagify or Other Third-Party Apps
However, your personal compilation is not enough to form a coherent picture. Therefore, it makes sense to use third-party applications to search for relevant hashtags. So Hashtagify is one of the most popular and convenient trendy tag search solutions. It makes it possible to evaluate the degree of popularity of hashtags, see who and how used a particular hashtag, and compile your own collections of the most relevant and trending hashtags for posts.
Influencers
Plus, it is also necessary to analyze what your competitors and owners of popular profiles in your niche are doing. Analyze their hashtag strategies, see what hashtags they use most often and how they combine them with each other.
Take Your Audience into Account
The next stage of our analysis is the analysis of hashtags that your target audience uses both in their posts and to search for the most interesting tweets. Most likely, you already have an approximate idea of this, but you need to collect a more detailed list of hashtags that can be used by both you and your target audience. To do this, put yourself in the position of the representative of your audience, conduct a brain-storming session, write down the most suitable results and filter them by popularity using the Hashtagify, which we already mentioned.
Come up with a Unique Hashtag
If you are promoting a personal or business brand using Twitter, you absolutely need a unique and branded hashtag. Try to come up with a hashtag that will contain your name, plus the core value that you offer. And by the way, it’s not necessary to use this hashtag in each of your posts – it’s enough to leave it for promotional tweets.
Relate the Moment to Your Tweets
Twitter is a kind of current news feed, so it will be wise to time your tweets to a specific event in the world, for example, the Olympics. However, common sense is also needed here.
- First, your post must be somehow thematically related to the event whose hashtag you are using.
- Secondly, your target audience should be interested in the event you mention.
- And thirdly, do not forget that such hashtags are a way to increase the reach of a tweet, but unfortunately, it is not a guarantee that all users who read your tweet will become your followers. However, a certain part of them will precisely subscribe to your profile.
Do Not Overuse Hashtags
As we said, two hashtags are the optimal number of them for one post. Most likely, at this stage, you have already found enough trending hashtags and you are eager to use them to start increasing your audience and engagement. However, do not rush. If you use a large number of hashtags in one post, this can be regarded as spam and then the positive effect of them will be lost.
It is much more reasonable to divide all your trending hashtags into thematic groups and choose two for each post. It is better to write a few short posts with different hashtags (only with a reasonable interval between posts, no need to spam every five minutes) and use the most appropriate but different hashtags for each post.
By the way, this will give you the opportunity to analyze which trend hashtags work best for your goals.
Do Not Use Too Long Ones and Reconsider Grammar in Your Hashtags
Practice shows that hashtags that are too long are inconvenient to remember and use. Therefore, you need to be as specific as possible, and when choosing hashtags, also take into account their convenience, memorability and the associations that they cause. Yes, there are times when a long hashtag is needed, but overall Twitter itself is about brevity and pithiness in everything.
Plus, you need to write your hashtags correctly. Correctly, from a Twitter’s perspective, of course. For example, if your hashtag consists of two short words, do not put a space between them. If you put a space between them, then only the first word will be understood as a hashtag, which means your idea will lose its meaning, and the target audience will not be able to find your tweet.
In addition, it will not be a violation of the rules if you do not use apostrophes in your hashtags. For example, you could write #shouldnt instead of # shouldn’t or #should not (the first rule about spaces).
Conclusion
In fact, everything is quite simple. The most important thing is to conduct a thorough study, and use the hashtags thoughtfully, putting yourself in the place of the target audience.
Bio
Ben Grant is a blog writer and Adsy contributor. He likes to discuss modern literature trends and books, as well as give personal tips on how to improve your writing style.
