You’ve heard of hashtags, you may already use them, you’ve certainly cringed at the hashtag generation. But don’t discount them too easily. Hashtags are a powerful marketing tool that are being underutilised.
In fact, hashtags are a great way to drive traffic to your posts, connect your content with other updates using the same hashtag and even generate leads.
Take MINI’s #MININOTNORMAL campaign, which according to Forbes magazine, saw 230,000 people engage with the campaign on social media within six weeks. MINI gained 30,000 new followers and fans, but more importantly, created over 3,000 leads and enquiries.
Hashtags are an excellent way to drive your social media marketing forward but only when used in a strategic and considered way.
We look into three essential tips to follow in order to keep the hashtag an effective tool for marketers and businesses alike.
#KeepItRelevant
People use hashtags to search for products and services. In order for your updates to appear when they do, relevant words need to be hashtagged.
Regardless of the social platform you are posting on, people are searching for specific words where your post will show up for them to engage with.
Convince and Convert explain how you can look at competitors and influencers in your field and see what they use, starting with a useful tool called Twitonomy which allows you to view all your twitter analytics, followers and more from one space.
A benefit of this is that you can see the hashtags that work before you decide what to use for your post.
With Hashtagify.me you can then find all of the related hashtags linking to the ones you found from competitors, allowing you to find some that are relevant but not yet being utilised.
Finally, to find how relevant they actually are, Rite Tag is another excellent tool. It allows you to search your hashtag list, and receive a colour coded list, so you can see the relevance of your hashtags.
#DontHashtagEverything
While hashtagging the keywords in a post may not seem enough to gain attention at first, hashtagging every word in the post is certainly not a good idea. People want to be able to read a post on their feed clearly without being impeded by hashtag after hashtag.
Using over two in your post may even come across as a spam post to your followers which clearly isn’t what you want.
Instead of piling up hashtags at the end of a post, embed them into it.
An example is:
5 Tools to Measure Instagram Hashtag Performance – http://buff.ly/2p6CntB #Measure #Performance
To a much neater:
5 Tools to #Measure Instagram Hashtag #Performance – https://t.co/8eMvc9cKfM
— GoldSand Digital (@GoldSandDigital) April 27, 2017
Although this may not look like much of a change, it neatens up the post and stops it looking like spam while including relevant hashtagged keywords.
#ConnectWithYourAudience
A powerful way to use hashtags in your social media is to offer an incentive for your audience to get involved. This worked incredibly well for Audi’s #WantAnR8, voted most successful campaign ever at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
The way it worked was to allow anyone who posted using the hashtag #WantAnR8 a chance of winning an R8 for a day. This focused the campaign on the individual, making it more personal while massively increasing the audience reach.
@MajaZdrvld Found it in NYC #IwantanR8 pic.twitter.com/5jqzQh4Tan
— Edith Schriever (@EdithSchriever) October 23, 2016
Volkswagen’s #foxatplanetaterra brought a city together when they hid tickets around Sao Paulo with the location on the map only zooming in depending on the amount of shares their hashtag received. It did so well that it became a trending topic throughout the whole of Brazil within two hours of launching.
So, that’s just three ways you can get more from the simple hashtag. As with all marketing, test, track and target to ensure it is making a positive difference and is worth implementing long term.
Hopefully these tips will help you get more from your social media marketing. If you have any tips we’d love to hear about them and if you want help with your social media campaigns please feel free to get in touch on 020 7287 9233 or email at info@goldsanddigital.com.
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