Creating a successful hashtag strategy requires careful research and thoughtful use. It also means understanding your own brand voice, audience, and niche.
Whether used in a tweet, a post, or copy, hashtags can significantly impact how and when people find your content. To help you create a solid and effective hashtag strategy, follow these essential tips:
Be Relevant
Hashtags should be relevant to your business and community. Otherwise, they’ll confuse, annoy, or disinterest people. Use trending hash tags for business to reach a larger audience, but be careful not to get caught up in “hashtag hijacking,” where unrelated, popular phrases are used on posts with no relevance or meaning to the post.
Hashtag research is a great way to discover and analyze trends and competition. Look at your competitors and see what hashtags they use to see how much digital space their content takes up in search results.
Also, look for niche and industry hashtags to gain visibility among like-minded communities. For example, #TargetRun captures the essence of a Target run experience and appeals to a specific group of people. This type of hashtag is less competitive and can be used to gain views, likes, shares, etc.
Be Short
Hashtags are an excellent way to add context and reach to your social media posts without taking up valuable caption space. They can also be used to support social issues, such as the #EachforEqual hashtag on International Women’s Day or the branded #BellLetsTalk on mental health awareness.
Use an online hashtag generator to help you find the right hashtags for your business. Try out different words and phrases until you find a few that are catchy, relevant, and easy to remember.
Be careful to string together only a few words in a hashtag because it will be hard to remember and may get lost in searches. Too many words could lead to your hashtag being banned by Instagram or misinterpreted negatively. Avoid using inappropriate or offensive hashtags.
Be Simple
Hashtags are a way for businesses to communicate with their audiences in real-time. Using trending hashtags can quickly connect your business to engaged customers and users.
Use a mix of hashtags that are unique to your business, as well as general, popular hashtags for maximum reach. Remember that these broad terms are more likely to be searched than hashtags specific to your business.
Hashtags are an excellent way for brands to promote their products and services. However, they’re also great for consumers to show off their love for your company. Encourage your audience to tag their photos with your hashtag so that you can showcase them on your social media accounts. This will build brand awareness and create a sense of loyalty with your customers.
Be Unique
As you develop hashtag ideas, don’t be afraid to be original. You’ll probably have some mediocre or bad ideas at first. Give yourself the freedom to write them down and marinate them.
Unique hashtags help your audience identify with your brand, a shared experience, or a familiar feeling. These tags also foster a community, which is especially important for millennial and Gen Z audiences who value authenticity and genuine interactions with brands.
Try creating a hashtag for a specific product or service. If you create an engaging hashtag, your audience will start using it in their posts, helping to spread the word about your business and generating new leads!
Be Authentic
Developing a great hashtag is a process. When you first start experimenting with ideas, expect a lot of mediocre and even bad ones — and that’s okay!
The best-branded hashtags evoke a feeling or reaction from your audience. They can be as straightforward or as complex as your brand and products. For example, some took a risk on Black Friday by telling customers to #OptOutside instead of going shopping — a successful campaign still used as their branded hashtag today.
Hashtags are a powerful way to increase your social media reach and engagement. With a loud, the right balance for your business. With some experimentation and consistency, learn how to maximize your hashtag usage across multiple platforms.
