Hashtag That Sh*t – A Guide For Modern Marketers

#Hashtags, the staple food for modern marketing. Why am I calling it a staple? Because that’s the most appropriate description to explain the role Hashtags play on modern digital marketing platforms. They’re often not given their due share of respect when companies brag about their social media strategies and success. But the thing is, they’re the unsung heroes that reach out to people when all else fails. Okay, maybe I exaggerated the credit hashtags should receive but, have I really? In this blog, I talk about why Hashtagging that sh*t may actually prove to be more fruitful for your content if only you utilize it the right way!

What are Hashtags and Why are they Important?

A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by the hash # symbol. While the symbol itself has been famous for decades, it became a social media sensation through Twitter in 2007 when Chris Messina proposed a plan to start a new form of ‘group interaction’.

This went on to become such a successful idea that it made a random # symbol into a major social media marketing strategy. Twitter officially introduced hashtags in 2009, Instagram has had it since it’s founding in 2010, and Facebook incorporated it in 2013. The goal of the hashtag is to make content discoverable, organized, and targeted.

Now, all major social platforms like LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, Tiktok, and other networking sites use Hashtags to make content optimized.

Hashtags are considered to be extremely important because even if we only talk about Instagram, which is the most productive place for hashtags to do their job, posts receive about 12.6% more engagement with hashtags than without. Apart from this:

• Hashtags can be used to determine competitor accounts and what they’re doing right to make their campaigns successful.
• They help enhance branding and visibility.
• Hashtags are the most popular “word-of-mouth” technique of today’s digital marketing platforms.
• They help look for relevant news and other important announcements and posts.

Do Hashtags Still Work?

This is a question that doesn’t even need asking. Hashtag is such a powerful tool that it can do wonders even for accounts that are new and just did their first post. Yes, there are things you can end up doing which will make your hashtag strategy not live up to its requirements. But if administered properly, hashtags will become your go-to marketing strategy for when you don’t have time to administer any other tactic.

You need to remember that there are benefits and risks to everything, even hashtags. Let’s look at a few below. When it comes to benefits, hashtags are worth your time!

1. Discoverability: Hashtags play the role of trackers in digital marketing. Using the appropriate hashtags on your posts can make your account discoverable. They can also be used by you to look for other accounts for your research or data collection methods.
2. Awareness: Hashtags are a tool that help create brand awareness. Brand-specific hashtags during different campaigns can not only make people discover you but also help them recognize you and your content.
3. Live Event Coverage: One of the most basic ways of using hashtags is while live events are being covered and you post about them to get your tweet or post read by people across the globe who’re looking for news on the event. Eg. during football matches, the hashtags are promoted as #RMAFCB or #PAKIND etc to promote people to post about this and drive traffic to their accounts.
4. Cross-Promotion: Hashtags can be used across platforms by a brand to promote a given campaign.

Using hashtags doesn’t do much for you, you have to use them in the right way. Here’s the cons to hashtags:

1. Good Hashtags Aren’t Easy: Hashtags may not be rocket science but it’s still hard to come up with ones that stick and do your job. Try it if you’re not willing to listen to me.
2. They Can Have a Counter Effect: Sometimes, Hashtags end up doing the opposite of what you intended to achieve. Failing to come up with a good hashtag can be disastrous to your campaign.

Platforms They’re Important On

As discussed, almost all of the major or minor platforms on the internet today make use of Hashtags for one purpose or another. And that’s what makes this little tool so powerful in the social media world. Let’s have a look at the platforms they’re important on.

While Twitter is known to be the first platform to have introduced hashtags, the reality is quite different. Hashtags started on a platform called IRC, where they helped people become part of groups that already existed. Although, it’s true that Twitter is where they became a popular and powerful tool they are today. When the platform began, it was complicated for people to search for relevant topics and communicate with people regarding it. Twitter’s networking nature, with its live-search algorithm, made this task difficult for users. Hence came Chris Messina with his idea of making Hashtags a thing. There are a lot of good uses for Hashtags on the platform, including:

1. Reach a Broader Audience: There’s always a vast amount of hashtags trending on Twitter related to a broad spectrum of niches, hence it becomes easier through these to find and interact with new audiences in new fields that you may be interested in.
2. Brainstorming: One of the best uses of Twitter hashtags is how they allow for you to brainstorm ideas and news because so many different people are sharing so many different opinions on trending topics through these hashtags.
3. Branding: Hashtags are one of the most effective ways of marketing on Twitter as creating a unique brand-specific hashtag and getting it to trend through influencer etc marketing can create better brand awareness and also make your start-up get promoted with ease.

Facebook

Facebook introduced its hashtag feature in 2013. And although the tool is supposed to work the same way as on Twitter, the reality is quite different. Hashtags on Twitter are displayed around the world without being hidden. But because people on Facebook have certain levels of privacy settings in place, the hashtags they use are prevented from appearing in relevant search engines. This means they’re only useful to most businesses to reach more businesses than to reach an audience.

1. Cross-Promotion: Hashtags on Facebook are mostly used to create brand consistency and awareness when businesses are running campaigns across platforms using the same hashtag.
2. Niche Search: Research what relevant niches and brands are doing through hashtags.

Instagram

Instagram was founded in 2010, and they came with a hashtag feature already a part of the platform. Instagram is perhaps one of the major accounts to maximize the use of hashtags. The platform allows a total of 30 hashtags per post.

1. Discovery: Instagram has a discover section from where you can search for hashtags and you’ll be directed to a page full of posts that have used that specific hashtag. It’s a good way to find your audience and your competitors.
2. Activism: Nowadays, all your breaking news can easily be seen through hashtags and current activism and social issues can be searched for through hashtags.
3. Promotion: Product, brand, and other forms of promotions become easier when accounts use relevant hashtags underneath posts to help people find them with ease.
4. Localization: Whenever you put a geographically relevant hashtag on your stories or posts, they help people near you to find you with ease.

3 Strategies You Should Follow

When coming up with tactics to utilize hashtags, you need a proper plan. As discussed, hashtags are a powerful weapon if used in the correct ways. Hence you need to build your strategy accordingly. You need to look for brand-relevance but also hashtags that aren’t overloaded with posts, this may end up making your post invisible in a sea of people using the same hashtags as you. Hence, you need a few important strategies to optimize your hashtag use.

1. Trending Hashtags

Using trending hashtags is a good way to get into the mainstream by discovering what your audience is currently paying attention to and making relevant posts to gain their attention. Eg. as a new digital agency you see the trend of New Year in December, you can share Marketing Trends to Pay Attention to This #NewYear and share a few good tips to gain the target audience’s attention.

Trends define what the world is paying attention to right at that moment. And changing those trends to make yourself relevant will get the target audience to pay better attention to you.

2. Industry or Content-Based Hashtags

These hashtags help you find people and businesses most aligned with the industry you’re working in. They help you to get in touch with people with the same interests as yours in big social platforms like Twitter and Instagram.

One way to do this is by looking for day-of-the-week hashtags relevant to your brand. Eg. food industry focuses on #FoodieFriday, or music enthusiasts look for #MusicMonday, etc. This helps not only increase awareness but also increase the quantity and quality of your followers.

3. Brand or Business Hashtags

These are the hashtags specific to your own brand or business. Each time you post on social media you can use personalized hashtags that can help build your business grow and attract quality traffic interested in your brand. Of course, you need to be sure of whether your hashtag is already being used by someone else or not. Once this check is done you can begin by using this hashtag in all your posts to increase its authenticity and relevance to your brand.

Hashtags are the bread and butter of today’s social media marketing world. In the right hands, they can do wonders your non-hashtag posts would never be able to achieve. Since they’re relevant among all major platforms, a good hashtag strategy can make your marketing growth reach heights you didn’t even imagine.