Hashtags are one of the most important organic social media strategies for your business or personal brand, but many individuals or organizations don’t have a solid strategy for how to use them.
You cannot say that you have created a solid hashtag strategy by using the same hashtags all the time, because trending hashtags change all the time.
If hashtags don’t increase engagement with your audience, don’t contribute to brand awareness and loyalty, and don’t allow your target market to find you on social media, your strategy with hashtags may be wrong. If you want to learn how to set up the right strategy, today we will tell you all the details about hashtags.
What is a hashtag?
Hashtags are tags used in social media to group content of the same theme or topic together. It is also defined as a method of labeling something as belonging to a certain category.
More specifically, a hashtag is a word, non-space phrase, or combination of letters and numbers prefixed with the “#” symbol. As a result, hashtags look like this:
#photograph
#marketing
#cats
The hashtag symbol created on Twitter is now widely used on all social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
As soon as they place a hashtag symbol (#) in front of a word, users are automatically redirected to a collection of content containing the same hashtag. This allows people to search for a specific topic they are interested in and filter related results.
Additionally, any social media user can create and use hashtags while sharing content on social media to categorize their posts under related topics or search terms. This allows social media content to become discoverable by other users.
While hashtags serve a vital function during newsworthy events, disasters and even global epidemics, they also provide many commercial benefits. Brands use hashtags as an important marketing strategy to attract attention, promote their products or services, and connect with their target audience.
Why is Hashtag used in social media?
Now that you understand what a hashtag is, why should you use hashtags on social media, let’s examine this issue step by step.
- Increasing engagement
Social media has one primary purpose: to allow users to connect and interact with the wider community. That’s why adding relevant hashtags to your content can significantly increase your engagement rates, including the number of likes, comments, shares, and new followers you receive.
Studies show that Instagram posts that contain at least one hashtag receive an average of 12.6% more engagement than those that don’t, while Tweets with “#” can see up to a 1.065 percent increase in engagement compared to a similar Tweet without it.
- Building brand awareness
Branded hashtags are a great way to promote and strengthen your business or personal brand, helping you increase your brand awareness. These hashtags are unique because they are specific to your business. It can include the name of your business or personal brand, the name of your product/service, or the name of your campaign..
Branded hashtags are not only a great way to get people talking about your product or service, they also allow you to easily track campaign listings and measure your marketing campaign engagement.
- Raising awareness about social issues
With selected hashtags, you can show your support for various social issues, charities or other important causes. Posting content that supports these issues is a great way to showcase your brand’s values and beliefs. It also allows you to focus on social issues and maintain your brand’s relevance and relevance to social or political events.
- Adding necessary context to your social media posts
Not all social media platforms allow you to write as many captions as you want. Twitter, for example, limits a post to only 280 characters. At this point, hashtags allow you to add necessary context to your message without the need for repetitive sentences or depleting your character count.
- Increasing the number of followers
Depending on how you add hashtags to your content, someone who follows that hashtag will see your content under that hashtag name. This allows them to follow your brand and continue to engage with your content.
Hashtag tactics you can use to increase your followers
Adding hashtags to your content is very easy, you can add any hashtag to any content you want, but you need to apply this strategy successfully for hashtags to help increase your follower count.
So what should you do? We have listed for you below:
Find the top performing hashtags
Before posting anything on social media, define your niche. Once you’ve decided on your niche, do a hashtag search on the relevant social media platform and see how the hashtags are performing (likes, interactions, and the number of people using the hashtag).
If you already have a list of hashtags, compare the number of likes/interactions your posts get with those of posts with trending hashtags.
If the hashtags you use are getting less engagement than the ones you find, you should drop the hashtags you already use and replace them with new ones.
Discover trending hashtags
If there are new trending hashtags when you put your content on social media, you can use these hashtags in your related content and get in front of a new audience.
Top questions about Hashtags
What is the ideal number of hashtags to use on Instagram?
The ideal number of hashtags to use per post on Instagram is 5 to 10 hashtags.
How many hashtags can I use on Instagram?
Although Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post and 10 per Story, research shows that using 5 to 10 hashtags is more effective.
What are the most popular Instagram hashtags?
The most popular hashtags change regularly, but here are the 25 most popular hashtags on Instagram in 2021:
love
fashion
photostagram
beautiful
art
photography
happy
picstagram
cute
follow
tbt
followme
nature
like4like
travel
style
repost
summer
instadaily
selfie
me
friends
fitness
What is the ideal number of hashtags to use on Facebook?
The ideal number of hashtags to use per post on Facebook is 1 to 2 hashtags.
What is the ideal number of hashtags to use on Twitter?
The ideal number of hashtags to use per post on Twitter: 1 to 2 hashtags.
How can I see the hashtags I want on Twitter?
To find tagged content on Twitter, simply put the # symbol in front of your search term and type the word you want to search after this symbol.
What is the ideal number of hashtags to use on Pinterest?
The ideal number of hashtags to use per video on Pinterest: 2 to 5 hashtags.
In summary, we can say that hashtags are one of the most important organic social media strategies and serve as a vital component of any social media platform. It not only helps you increase engagement with your audience and help them find you, but also allows your followers to see your support for important social issues and stay informed about new developments.