Hashtags have become a crucial part of social media marketing. Brands and marketers are using hashtags to make their content more discoverable. This helps them reach, attract, and engage new audiences and, eventually, drive more conversions.
If used the right way, hashtags can prove to be one of the most effective marketing tools for your brand. They can not only help you get the attention of your potential customers, but also make it easier for you to build meaningful connections with a loyal following.
To drive better results with your social media marketing campaigns, you should start leveraging the power of relevant and trending hashtags.
Why are Hashtags Important?
Hashtags are much like keywords or tags used to label your social media content. They help people who are interested in a certain topic, product, or brand find more content related to it.
Using the right hashtags can help you:
- Maximize your brand’s exposure
- Increase your brand’s social media reach
- Boost user engagement
- Support your brand building efforts
- Discover new audiences
- Attract and engage potential buyers
- Drive more conversions
If you’re still not convinced about the difference that hashtags can make to your social campaigns, get inspired by the success story of the #ShareYourEars campaign.
Disney started this hashtag campaign in collaboration with the Make-A-Wish foundation to raise funds for charity. They asked people to wear Mickey Mouse ears, take pictures, and share them with the hashtag, “#ShareYourEars.” For each post, Disney donated $5 to the charity.
Image via Twitter
This hashtag is still going strong on both Twitter and Instagram. Even influencers have been leveraging it to help non-profit organizations raise funds.
That’s the kind of influence a unique, powerful hashtag campaign can have on people. Now it’s your turn to use them to boost your social reach.
4 Ways to Level Up Your Hashtag Game on Social Media
Let’s discuss how you can make hashtag marketing work for you so that you can achieve a higher ROI from your social media campaigns.
Let’s get started.
1. Find the Right Hashtags for Your Brand
You should choose your hashtags wisely. It is important to build a list of hashtags that reflect the kind of content you share and the overall aesthetics of your brand.
Think of it this way: “Which words or phrases will people use to search for your content?”
You need to look for niche-specific hashtags that your target audience is actually searching for. This can help you reach people who are more likely to be interested in your content, products/services, and brand.
To conduct thorough hashtag research, you should:
- Check which hashtags are trending in your niche on different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
- Check which hashtags your competitors are using and which of those hashtags are helping them drive maximum engagement.
- Check which hashtags your target audience is using, and whether you can create content using those hashtags.
- Check which hashtags the top influencers in your niche are using.
Researching all of this manually can be time-consuming. The good part is that there are various tools that can help you find the right hashtags for your brand.
In fact, these tools can also give you insights about the reach and popularity of specific hashtags and help you track and monitor the results they get.
2. Narrow Your Hashtag List and Keep It Organized
There may be numerous hashtags relevant to your niche and brand, but you need to understand that you can’t (and shouldn’t) use them all.
You should be specific while choosing the hashtags you want to target. Remember, the more you narrow down your target market, the more customers you’ll attract. And, isn’t that your end goal?
If you want to win actual customers, you should look for more specific and targeted hashtags. This will help you stand out on social media and get discovered by the right audience.
For example, if your brand sells baby products, you should target hashtags like “#newmom” and “#babyproducts,” instead of targeting “#parents.”
Using the hashtag, “#parents,” will attract a wider audience, which may include parents of kids of all age groups. However, your ideal customers are the parents of newborn babies.
Similarly, if you have a list of 20 hashtags relevant to your brand and products, you shouldn’t use all of them in all of your posts. It is crucial to ensure that your hashtags are tailored to each post.
For example, if you’re promoting a stroller, you can’t use “#babyshampoo” with it. However, it is appropriate to use hashtags like “#babygear,” “#strollers,” and “babyproducts,” just like the buybuy BABY brand did in their post below.
Image via Instagram
3. Create Your Own Hashtags to Enhance Brand Recall
Along with capitalizing on niche-specific and other trending hashtags, you should come up with your own unique, branded hashtags.
Branded hashtags can help you increase brand recognition by getting more people to remember your brand. These hashtags are also great for user-generated content (UGC) campaigns.
While creating a branded hashtag, you should:
- Include your brand name.
- Keep it short and memorable.
- Make sure that it’s easy to write your hashtag.
- Come up with a hashtag that reflects what your brand stands for.
Girlboss, a professional network for ambitious women, leveraged “#GirlbossMoment” to encourage women to share their proud moments.
Image via Instagram
They later compiled the highlights from their #GirlbossMoment campaign and talked about them on their podcast.
You should not only promote the use of your branded hashtags, but also follow them. Following your own hashtag can help you track how people are interacting with your brand. You can discover your social mentions without using any specific monitoring tools.
4. Ask Influencers to Use Your Hashtags
The best way to amplify the reach of your social media content and hashtags is to leverage effective influencer collaborations.
You can partner with various influencers in your niche, who have highly-engaged followings, to gain more traction for your branded or campaign-specific hashtags.
One brand that aced the art of leveraging influencers to boost their reach, engagement, and sales is the famous watch brand, Daniel Wellington.
They partnered with numerous micro-influencers and asked them to use their branded hashtag, “#danielwellington.” The brand chooses the best pics and features them on their Instagram profile as part of their “#DWPickoftheDay” campaign.
With many influencers posting content with “#danielwellington” every day, the brand was able to boost the amount of user-generated content featuring their products as well.
Their hashtag has over 2 million Instagram posts as of now, and the count is continuously increasing.
Image via Instagram
Partnering with the right influencers can help you get that kind of boost and make your hashtags go viral. If you’re finding it difficult to identify them, feel free to check out this list of useful tools that can help you choose the right influencers for your brand.
Dos and Don’ts of Hashtag Marketing
Dos:
- #Makesureyourhashtagisshortandconcise
- Integrate your hashtags into sentences.
- Customize your hashtag strategy for the social media platform you’re using.
Don’ts:
- #Don’t #overdo #the #hashtagging
- Don’t combine more than 3-4 words together.
- Don’t change the hashtag halfway through a campaign.
- Don’t use offensive hashtags.
Conclusion
There’s no denying the fact that hashtags hold a lot of potential. If you deliver valuable content on social networks, combining it with relevant hashtags can help you gain more traction and maximize returns.
You should, therefore, make hashtags a part of your social media strategy and utilize them to boost results. We hope the hashtag marketing points we have discussed above will make it easier for you.
Have you generated great results with hashtag marketing? Please share your success story and insights with us in the comments below.
Author Bio
Shane Barker is a digital strategist & the Co-Founder of Attrock. He specializes in SEO, influencer & content marketing, and has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers, A-List celebrities.
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