Use hashtag marketing e.g.: #christmasshopping to effectively promote your business. Have a strategy in place for optimizing the use of hashtags. Develop a list of potential hashtags by categories. Focus on the types you should use for your business. For hashtags marketing, the main types are brand hashtags, campaign hashtags, content hashtags, and trending hashtags. Use tools for research and select appropriate hashtags to progress your hashtag marketing strategy. Best practices for hashtags are looking out for conversations, keeping it simple, the number of hashtags to be used, and either creating your own or joining in the conversation. Use hashtags to improve the reach in your business’s social media marketing. Follow brands that have success stories associated with the use of hashtags. Hashtags are keyword phrases that work great with social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.
Table of Contents
Hashtag Marketing: Introduction & History
Hashtags tag brands and businesses to target online communities engaged through social media platforms. Examples are Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, etc. Click a specific hashtag in a message, and view a list of posts that use the same hashtag. Hashtags are mainly meant for followers. Hashtags link the user associated with social media through a product or a brand. Run a campaign with an offer or some fresh content. Engage with your audience by limiting the number of hashtags depending on the social media channel. If more hashtags are used it can appear to be spam or irritating. Interact with your audience by asking
Hashtag Marketing for Your Business – Brand Mentions & hashtags.org
A Popular tool such as ‘Brand Mentions‘ correctly tracks hashtags. BrandMentions is a web and social monitoring tool fig1 that helps you see what’s being said about your brand, engage with customers, spy on the competition, and track hashtags performance. Check out how the tool can help you and your business
- Find out who is saying what about you online with real-time email alerts.
- Track sentiment analysis and understand the tone of conversations you are mentioned in to manage brand reputation.
- Get an accurate understanding of any brand or competitors.
- Track hashtags and monitor hashtag performance.
- Identify top influencers and top websites that talk about you and your competition.
- Perform competitive analysis.
- Research new content ideas.
- Best for: Business owners, social media managers, and agencies who want to stay on top of their online image
With hashtags.org (fig2) create a brand new hashtag around your blog or business. See that the hashtag you picked for your business has not been registered. They should have no related tweets, nor ever been used before. Find out which tweet is trending, compare different keywords, and tweet with what is most popular. Tweets with 1 or maybe 2 hashtags perform better to reach the target audience, who are most likely to follow you.
For example, when we type #comedyshow, hashtag.org displays analytics for this tag. People use this tag on a daily basis. Track the popularity of this tag by hovering on the graph. For eg at 1:00 pm, there were 19 estimated tweets and it is the maximum for 5:00 pm. Scroll down the page to view the #comedyshow other prolific users. There may be other people whom you may want to follow and find out what they have to say. Navigating further below find the recent tweets having #comedyshow. They show you ideas of what people are talking about?. Who you should be following?. What new insights you can get?.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page fig3. For an upgraded account, find info about categories-related hashtags in a graphical format.
In Instagram, hashtags are used to collect photos and videos fig4.
For example, view the collection of videos (fig5) for the hashtag #comedyshow. The videos were grouped into a collection of comedy show videos that people searched using the #comedyshow.
Hashtags for Social Media
The RiteTag Social Media Marketing Tool is available as a browser extension (fig6) for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.
RiteTag browser extension (fig7) displays a summary of the result. For eg #indiancinema in search results. With the RiteTag browser extension < https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ritetag-ritekit/ >highlight text or right-click on an image and quickly get relative hashtag suggestions.
Go through the RiteTag Video < https://help.ritekit.com/en/article/ritetag-pro-20-browser-extension-tutorial-1jve5fa/ > to learn more about how to use this tool. The tool provides you feedback on hashtags as you type showing its strength. Find what are Twitter’s top and preferred hashtags in context with your current hashtags. It gives you a list of all hashtags that you can use for your tweets be it text or images.
Hashtags on Twitter
A tagged keyword in the browser discovers content and accounts based on that hashtag. eg: #kenyasafari < https://twitter.com/hashtag/kenyasafari?lang=en&lang=en&lang=en > To read more go to < https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/how-to-use-hashtags >
Trendsmap
The trending hashtags Trendsmap (fig8) is a real-time Twitter tool that visualizes trends. At the left top, we have the zoom that helps to do a quick zoom to your location, city, region, and world. When you are in your location area and you want to zoom out then click on the world icon or the region icon from the box. The box holds the four icons – location, city, region, and world side by side. Below the box that holds the icons is another box that holds the tabs – Words, Hashtags, Users. Keep only the hashtag box checked so that we can have all hashtags displayed on the map. Zoom down on eg #Aarey which is trending now. On clicking, you will see ‘All tweets’ on the right side. Scroll down in this tweet area and click on any individual tweet for it to be displayed.
Find 3 tabs to the top right. They are (1) Analyse Tab – The Analytic tool analyzes the hashtag eg #Aarey in depth. (2) Visualize Tab – The Visualization tool visualizes the hashtag eg #Aarey (3) Alert Tab – The Alert tool gets alerts for the hashtag eg #Aarey
Analyse Tab
Click on the Analyze tab and see a summary (fig9) of that particular hashtag with the Alert tab below.
Visualise Tab
The Visualize tab gives you a graphical representation of those tweets over a period of time which is 24 hours for a free trial of 7 days. View the paid options by clicking on their pricing plan < https://www.trendsmap.com/pricing > to unlock the advanced features. In the timeline below scroll to the bottom. You can focus on a tweet to get the user ID, Twitter handle, and the actual ID of the Twitter name. If you desire you can save this visualization and publish it so that you can share it on Twitter. Next, you can change ‘Aarey’ by adding another topic say ‘MumbaiMetro3’, and see other people talking about @MumbaiMetro3. Create a title for this visualization.
The trending topic these days in Mumbai are hashtags #aarey, #saveaarey, #aareyforest, #saveaareyforest, etc. The subject is the felling of 2600 trees to construct the car shed for the
Alert Tab
Click on the Alert tab, create a new alert and name the alert. You will need a premium account to connect to Slack and go to the alert’s index.
Hashtags on Instagram
Following Hashtags on Instagram enables your posts to become visible in the feeds of other people who follow the same hashtags you use. Include long-tail hashtags on your posts so that you can compete with the other popular hashtags. Use different hashtags specific to the images on every post to avoid being penalized by Instagram. View the hashtag #kenyasafari on Instagram by going to < https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/kenyasafari/?hl=en > Read more about how-to-use-hashtags-on-Instagram by going to < https://help.instagram.com/351460621611097 >.
Hashtags on Facebook
To search for a hashtag on Facebook type in your browser e.g. < facebook.com/hashtag/kenyasafari > for the hashtag #kenyasafari. Read the Facebook documentation by going to < https://www.facebook.com/formedia/blog/using-hashtags-on-facebook >.
Hashtags on Pinterest
Search for the hashtag ‘#kenyasafari on Pinterest’. V
Hashtags on LinkedIn
LinkedIn uses relevant hashtags in posts so that other users having a common interest can find your content. LinkedIn help has a document on Using Hashtags on LinkedIn < https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/92930/using-hashtags-on-linkedin?lang=en >.
Hashtag Marketing: Create hashtags with appropriate keywords
When we click on a hashtag it should land on a relevant page. Create the page by selecting appropriate keywords. Name the page preceding the hashtag symbol #nameOfThePage. The Landing page should contain all the information. A Hashtag becomes a hyperlink so that when clicked it will take to the search results page for that tag. Sometimes referred to as viral marketing, hashtags became viral online on account of perpetual chain user interactions. When hashtags are carefully researched it will become popular. Generate content in line with the user perspectives, and incentivize the use of hashtags.
Hashtag Marketing: Types of hashtags for business
To engage your brand with the market use the 3 types of marketing strategies:
1-Brand or Campaign hashtags eg (#huggies) fig10.
2-Trending hashtags – are the current and ongoing trends for the moment. Wrap your post content related to the trending context eg (#cricketworldcup2019). Research to find & use trending hashtags fig11.
3-Content hashtags – Hashtag words that can appear in your post say written on ‘wildlife’ fig12.
Hashtag Marketing: Twitter for lead generation
Twitter was the first to start hashtags in Oct 2007 with the main purpose of filtering content easily. Hashtags on Twitter connect to other networking sites with an extensive audience for finding relevant information. Tweets on Twitter are read by a sizeable audience and are visible to almost everyone. In Twitter, the hashtag can be linked to a list of tweets for any topic if preceded by #. Twitter lead generation cards can prove to be useful in generating leads by adding more content to your tweets. Users become curious and click on such tweets to expand them.
Use the Free Twitter Influencer Analysis Tool < https://klear.com/free-tools/twitter-analysis > to create your own list of influencers. With a paid account, track data for other social networks, as well such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Hashtag Marketing: Resources
Use tools such as hashtagify.me, buzzsumo, etc. for hashtag analytics.
Hashtagify
In fig13, hashtagify.me monitors and analyses the Twitter hashtag (#diamondring) for its popularity. It answers queries such as – What are the related hashtags? Who uses the hashtag?. Who the influencers are? Which countries use the hashtag?. Under related Hashtags find other related (hyperlink) hashtags which when clicked will display the analytics for that hashtag. This tool also shows a wall of posts using the #diamondring hashtag and its usage.
#diamondring -Top 6 languages used and spelling variants used fig14.
BuzzSumo
With the BuzzSumo tool search by a specific hashtag. The Content Analyzer Buzzsumo lists show which social media posts contain that particular hashtag. Buzzsumo makes suggestions, no sooner you start entering a hashtag.
Conclusion
In Hashtag Marketing use hashtags (#) as profile names and generate traffic to your website. Google has implemented hashtags in search by partnering with Twitter. Hashtag searches are now made possible to support campaigns. Hashtags for business and niche marketing can prove to be cost-effective. The key to success lies in understanding – How hashtags work for your business. How they can be applied to your campaigns? Understand where hashtags may be used for your social media strategies. Unearth methods so that your hashtags are used in the most positive way.
Search hashtags on Twitter relevant to your business. Find popular ones for use in your media campaigns. The proper placement of hashtags on Instagram for your campaigns aims at getting more likes for your images. Hashtags on Facebook help generate more traffic. Hashtags can be used on YouTube and also in the content posts on Pinterest. Know what are the trending hashtags? Select the trending hashtags that make the most impact on maximizing traffic to your ad campaigns. Research a trending hashtag and find the best hashtag for your campaigns. Employing free or paid tools determines the strength of your hashtag which ultimately decides the future of your campaigns. After creating a campaign make sure to track results so that you gain traffic from your social media campaigns. Many hashtags analytic software free and paid are available for tracking.