When you are in the world of social media marketing, one of your most powerful tools is the hashtag. Whether you are a business professional trying to get your product or service out there, or if you are just trying to share an idea for the fun of it, a smart hashtag can go a long way. Here are four ways that you can make hashtags work for you!
- Discoverability. Whatever content you have written, you can sum it up by strategically choosing the keyword hashtags that relate to your material. In this case, you want to use common words that people might be likely to use in a search on that platform. This gives you a tool to allow people who did not know about your content – but are interested in your subject matter – to wander onto your message. You can use a tool that is specifically designed for hashtag research, or just start by doing a search yourself. Running some quick searches for hashtags related to your content can easily generate evidence for you on which ones are most common.
- Building community. If you already have a strong community, assign a unique hashtag for them. You can do this for specific campaigns, events, podcasts, presentations, contests, etc. Your hashtag can be a short-term mini-campaign or it can be something that exists for the life of your brand marketing. The point is to empower the people in your community to be an asset for your brand. Not only will they feel like a stronger part of your community by getting involved in this way and contributing to the story of the brand, but they can really move the needle for you when you harness the volume of their communication with a hashtag.
- Creating conversation. Assigning hashtags on some platforms can give you the opportunity to track and create conversations. A unique hashtag can be used for the specific purpose of creating a chat for a designated period of time, or it can be used to collect opinions and information over time for a central theme that you have created. Once you have that material, there are all kinds of creative ways you can leverage it if you want to have audience-generated content. If not, the conversations stand alone as a way to build bonds within your community.
- Research. On the flip side, if you want to research what people are saying about any particular topic, you can do a search for a hashtag on that subject. Of course, the material that you are getting through this method is opinions and you always need to consider the source of your material. However, knowing what people are saying and what they care about are both huge factors in creating relevant content for your brand. When it comes to social media marketing, relevance is key.
Ultimately, some social media platforms utilize hashtags more than others. On platforms where hashtags have a presence, this is an angle worth exploring for your content. Hashtags are a tool that you can experiment with to draw in new traffic, stay on top of trends, and build more loyalty within your existing community.