01 Jul How to Use Hashtags Effectively
Hashtags are something that people tend to either really understand or really not. It started out being called a pound symbol to help define groups and has grown into a huge phenomenon. I hope this short tutorial about the best way to use hashtags gives you some guidance.
The first question is obviously, why do people use hashtags? Hashtags make it easy for people to find and follow discussions. They are really a giant sorting mechanism. You will see them about events, brands, promotions, or just about something that is happening in someone’s life. For instance, my stepdaughter has a special hashtag for her wedding. That way if everyone who posts a picture or a video from her wedding weekend uses her hashtag, she can see them all on social media by sorting by her special hashtag.
How did hashtags get started? Twitter. Here is an article if you are interested in the origin. We see them on all aspects of social media now.
How do hashtags help people follow discussions? Multiple ways. You can track the performance of your hashtag across social media. It helps you know who your audience is and who is talking about what you are promoting.
How do you use hashtags effectively on Twitter? On Twitter, hashtags are primarily used to categorize. Interestingly tweets with hashtags get twice the engagement than tweets with no hashtag. And tweets with one or two hashtags have a significantly higher engagement than those with three or more. Actually, using more than two hashtags drops the average engagement on a tweet by 17%.
How do you use hashtag effectively on Instagram? Perhaps you have seen some posts on Instagram that seem to have a zillion hashtags. And you wonder what on earth is going on. Well, the answer is that hashtags on Instagram work the complete opposite way from Twitter. On Instagram, posts with 11 or more hashtags perform the best so you want to use a lot of hashtags on Instagram to build your following. One of the keys with growing your Instagram community is to start with broad topic hashtags and gradually narrow the topics as your community grows. An easy way to help you make some hashtag decisions is to look at how many times a hashtag has been used by starting to type a hashtag in a post. It will help guide you.
How do hashtags on Facebook work? This is where it gets even more interesting. Having zero hashtags is the key to a better performing Facebook post. The more hashtags you use on a Facebook post the more the number of interactions decreases.
So, what are some tips for successful hashtag campaigns? Be sure to try and make a hashtag memorable. It should be relevant to what you want the audience to think about when they think about you. Figure out who your audience is and who influences your audience to identify new hashtags. If you have a brand, use it as a hashtag. Sometimes a hashtag does not look right in all lowercase letters so you will need to capitalize the keywords. Never put a space in between words in a hashtag. Be sure to follow trends in your industry by checking out hashtags that are used by your competitors and industry influencers.
The infographic that is inserted into this post is a great resource for this article and is a helpful visual aid when you are trying to figure out how to use hashtags effectively. #howtousehashtags
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