In 2007, Chris Messina had an idea of tagging social media groups and topics with a #. Chris pitched the idea to Twitter but was told that the concept was ‘too nerdy’!
Did you know? The hashtag system is one of the most actively used social media tagging tool on the web today.
So maybe Twitter should have listened, eh?
Although hashtags have now been around for some time, we’re often asked whether there’s any point to hashtags, and if they actually ‘do’ anything. Within this blog, we’ll aim to answer those questions.
Hashtags allow your content to reach more accounts that some users otherwise might not see because hashtags turn phrases and words into searchable links. This makes it easier to find content that you are interested in, and more importantly, helps other people to find your business, product or service.
Hashtags are used to help people find topics that are similar to their interests and participate in discussions that are important to them. With so many hashtags used daily, you must increase hashtags within your posts to keep your content fresh and to increase the views to your business page
When it comes to your brand, creating hashtags that are unique to your business to include in your social media content is a great way to build up brand popularity/awareness and help others locate your content. You should spend a bit of time doing some research about the hashtags that relate to your business to ensure that you’re using relevant and popular hashtags.
Hashtags for Twitter
Chris Messina said, “There was a small group of us in San Francisco using an early social network called Twitter,” Messina said. “We were thinking Twitter needs some kind of group organizing framework.”. With no other way to solve this issue, Chris and some friends got to work with the idea.
Today we know that Twitter hashtags can help you attract a highly relevant audience that is interested in what you have to say. Users may discover your products through these hashtags, while others might want to start following your brand – it’s all about driving potential customers to your business. Research found, that tweets with hashtags, increased clicks, retweets, favourites, and replies - for individuals and brands using Twitter.
Twitter has an optimum of just two hashtags on a post; so don’t flood your tweets with hashtag after hashtag as the tweet won’t perform as well as it could. Twitter is often the first platform that people go to find out the latest news, latest football results or traffic updates. Using a hashtag with a relevant search term helps you to quickly scan the internet for what people are looking for.
Tips for Twitter
Have you considered scheduling content around Twitter hours?
“A Twitter hour is an event set up on Twitter that allows users to contribute by using a hashtag to a conversation that is held at a specific date and time.” Jumping on trends like ‘Twitter Hours’ is a great way to increase your engagement to your tweets. It’s an event designed for people to interact with each other’s tweets and spark conversations between like-minded people.
Hashtags for Instagram
Through all the updates and changes Instagram has had since 2010, one thing has remained consistent - the importance of Instagram hashtags. Even in 2021, using relevant, targeted hashtags on your posts and stories is one of the most effective ways to get noticed by new audiences.
If you have a public or business account and add a hashtag to a post, that post will be visible on the subsequent hashtag page. For example; #Sweets has 27.3 million mentions, and through clicking this hashtag you can view all the related posts containing that hashtag. Instagram has also changed some of the language we use – and you might not even realise it. If you’ve ever used #YOLO, #FOMO or #TBT – you’re also hopping on the back of a hashtag trend.
Reaching your audience with hashtags
The right hashtags can put you in front of your target audience, even if they haven’t connected with you before. On Instagram, the optimum number of hashtags per post is around 30. So hashtag away!
Understanding how to use relevant hashtags for your business is key to developing an effective Instagram hashtag strategy. Consider including ‘community hashtags’ – hashtags that connect like-minded users and your location. Additionally, including ‘branded hashtags’ that are unique to your company and can drive awareness around your brand e.g. #YoubeeMedia and #CreativeSolutionsCreatingResults can enhance brand awareness and reach. These hashtags are used on Youbee Media’s Instagram account to build up our brand popularity and by clicking on this hashtag, you’ll find more content like this.
You need to be strategic about what hashtags you include in your content, when to use them, and how often. While there are hashtags that have been used millions of times on Instagram, that doesn’t necessarily mean your content will gain lots of likes just because you include #love because you’re fighting for the same space as millions of other people. So try a combination of unique and specific hashtags, while paying close attention to what’s popular and trending.
Insights on Instagram
When using a business account on Instagram, you can easily see where your impressions have come from within your Insights. This is a great way to see whether your audience found your content from their home page / feed, location tags, from your profile or the hashtags you used.
If this doesn’t demonstrate the power of hashtags, nothing will.
For social media management advice, work with Youbee Media or join one of Becky’s marketing workshops for expert consultancy support.
