How To Use Hashtags To Improve Your Marketing Campaigns
The hashtag has quickly become a very important component of social media. It allows people across different platforms to connect over the same ideas more easily than ever. Hashtags are also a tool that allows people to join a conversation and have a higher chance of being heard. Still, despite the importance and popularity of hashtags, many people don’t have a clear idea of how to properly use them or the positive impact they can have on their business.
What Are Hashtags, And What Do They Do?
Hashtags are essentially labels that make it easier for people to find posts or information with a theme or containing specific content. They are created by including the ‘#’ symbol before a word or phrase without spaces.
Hashtags make it easier to cut through the digital clutter and focus only on the information we want by categorizing posts. If done properly, hashtags can also help increase engagement, attract followers to a certain niche, strengthen a brand image and help reach a target audience (and vice versa).
Why Are Hashtags So Important?
Despite the many jokes on the overuse of hashtags, hashtags can provide a lot of benefits when used strategically. They can put your content in front of a much bigger audience, raise awareness about your brand, reach a specific group of people, boost your SEO, among other things. Below, we’ve highlighted six of the main reasons why hashtags should be a part of your marketing strategy.
1. Stay on top of your competition
One of the most important things for a business is to figure out who your competitors are, what they offer, how they promote themselves, and find what makes you the better choice. You can use social media platforms to research competitor accounts, their most-used hashtags, and best-performing posts. All of this information can help you figure out what will work best for your social media strategy, as well as what to avoid. Moreover, hashtags are constantly evolving. What was once an incredibly popular hashtag could be irrelevant a couple of days after. Keeping up with trending hashtags related to your product will make your brand more convincing and reliable.
2. Become more visible
Hashtags can help you expand your audience and increase brand awareness. If a user searches for your brand, they will also see relevant hashtags you use and branded posts. This increase in visibility usually increases in followers and potential customers. Additionally, you can create hashtags to encourage your customers to use the hashtag when they use/purchase your product. Having your own hashtags allows you to dominate that hashtag with your brand.
3. Promote your business
Hashtags give you the ability to create targeted campaigns. When you post about a promotion using a hashtag, you encourage your followers to use it as well, then their followers, and so on. This cycle creates great visibility for your campaign and can help you reach your target audience by using hashtags they are already following.
4. Share your stance on political issues
While many businesses decide to remain politically neutral, others are unafraid to share their stance on political issues. If you want your brand to be a part of these conversations, you can use the hashtags created for specific political movements to show your support. Supporting a cause lets your audience know where you stand, and it humanizes your brand. Just make sure that you are authentic and consistent when supporting political movements.
5. Mark your location
Another benefit of using hashtags is marking your location. This is especially beneficial for brick-and-mortar stores or events. Using geographical tags in your posts is a useful tool that helps your audience know your exact location and lets your visitors share their experience with their followers.
7 Hashtag Tips For Better Marketing Campaigns
Now that you know the influence hashtags can have on your business, you may be wondering where to start and how to make the most out of them. We have highlighted seven hashtag tips that will help you create a more impactful marketing campaign.
1. Create branded hashtags
Creating a branded hashtag is one of the most important things you can do for your campaign. Branded hashtags contain the name of your brand, a specific product, the name of the campaign, or even your slogan. Creating a branded hashtag will allow you to monitor the performance of your campaign while also encouraging user-generated content from your audience.
2. Analyze the performance of hashtags
Before you start adding a bunch of hashtags to your posts, you should consider analyzing the performance of those hashtags with free tools like Hashtagify.me or Hashatit. These tools allow you to see the performance of specific hashtags and help you find the best hashtags for your posts.
3. Promote contests
If done properly, creating a contest can significantly boost user engagement. People like to compete, and they love the prospect of getting something for free. Contests result in a lot of user-generated content with your hashtags in them, which translates into better awareness about your brand.
4. Join trending topics
Using hashtags from trending topics can significantly benefit your marketing campaign because they engage an incredibly high number of readers. Using the right trending hashtags can get your brand/content in front of a massive audience. In addition, because so many people see trending hashtags, many of them will not necessarily be part of your target audience, even if the hashtag is related to your industry, and that will also increase your brand awareness.
5. Join a conversation
Similar to joining a trending topic, joining a conversation on social media through the use of the right hashtags will increase your visibility while linking your brand to that particular conversation. However, you shouldn’t try joining whatever conversation sparks your interest; it should be relevant to your industry and your brand.
6. Raise awareness about a particular topic
Choose a topic that relates to your brand and spread awareness about it. Hashtags that spread awareness about an important topic not only have the possibility of going viral, but they also result in a lot of user-generated content which will spread awareness about your company. Most importantly, you will be doing something beneficial for your community, and your company will be viewed as socially responsible.
7. Build a community around a hashtag
Last but not least, build a community around your campaign hashtag. If you’re successfully creating the perfect hashtag for a campaign, your followers may connect by using your hashtag.
Summary
As you can see, hashtags can help you boost your brand awareness and elevate your marketing campaigns significantly. Whether you are a new business or a well-known brand, using hashtags is a surefire way to get your voice heard on social media.
If you found this blog helpful and would like to read more tips and advice on marketing and branding, check out the rest of Power Move Marketing's blogs!
Author: Julia Prieto