Have you ever used a hashtag to market anything?
When used to market a product, hashtags allow social media users to find and engage with content related to their common interests. Oftentimes, Hashtags propel content to reach more people which acts as a great way to increase traffic for your brand.
Social media Hashtags are like social media communities. The specific Hashtags allow like-minded social media users to come together to share valuable content with you and support your interests. Since its introduction in 2007 to filter out content, hashtags have become a popular tool for marketers and an effective tool in highlighting brands, products and businesses and even improving your SEO.
Especially on Twitter, Hashtags build better and wider connections for brands better than other social media sites. Twitter enables brands to filter and find relevant information even that of an unknown author. #Mydressmychoice, #TeamKenya, #NoHumanIsLimited are among the most successful hashtag campaigns we have had in the recent past.
While hashtags are an effective marketing tool, they at times backfire on brands when not used well.. To create winning hashtags for your brand, you need to adapt winning strategies that will be effective in engaging your audience. First, do thorough research on how to make catchy hashtags that match your brand and locally test them before reaching out to the general public with unmatched hashtags. you need to identify the specific hashtags based on what you would like to share with the public. With these, you need to identify the three major types of hashtags that include: Brand and campaign hashtags, Content hashtags and trending hashtags.
Brand and campaign hashtags are majorly used to market and promote a brand or a business, content hashtags are tags majorly used in product promotion for instance events like the #WRCRally2021, a place or a location or anything else while trending hashtags comprise of tagging the popular topics that everyone is talking about. Trending topics don’t have a specific genre, It can be anything from propaganda, a celebrity topic or anything.
Let’s look at some of the best hashtag strategies to reach your audience. They include:
Use only a few hashtags
Limited hashtags make the content look more fitting to the topic such that users can easily connect and understand. When you create more hashtags for a single topic, chances are users will treat it as spam or might not understand the topics as it brings confusion to the reader on what to pick. Thus, your message to the audience will be distorted.
Create hashtags that offer solutions or answers to customers
While building good hashtags especially for brands, make sure you create conversations that offer solutions to customers or give them answers to their problems. For instance, a hashtag like #DoMoreWithMoneyManager will definitely open up discussions or attract more people to dig into the topic to understand it better. Money managing is one critical area more people spend time to look for answers and creating a solution-oriented hashtag will drive conversations to your topic
Make your hashtags simple and catchy
One of the purposes of a hashtag is majorly to help social media users connect with their topics of interest. As such, they need to be as concise as possible to help the readers understand. The phrase should be easy to remember and understand the message you are trying to put across. A short and precise headline will also capture a readers attention even when they were initially not interested in the hashtag.
When your hashtags are long or complicated, very few people will understand your message thus, limiting them from getting them to join the conversations.
Make it easier for your audience to join the conversations
We’ve earlier talked about precise hashtags and how they are easy to capture the reader’s attention. Making it easier for your audience to join the conversations is also one of the winning hashtag strategies. Depending on what you are sharing, give rewards to your audience or even send them early reminders about the conversations. This makes them feel involved in the conversations.
Lastly, an interesting topic is always a real hook. An interesting topic will induce people to participate and even share more ideas about what you already have. Out of 10 social media users, there’s at least one who has read ahead of you is as knowledgeable on the topic of discussion as you are. By allowing them to share ideas and participate, you will definitely learn from each other.
What other winning hashtag strategies have you used? we would like to also learn from you.