20 Mar 5 #Hashtag Do’s & Don’ts You Really Should Know
Key Points to Make Sure You Stay Relevant
If social media is a store, then hashtags—those short words preceded by the pound sign (#)—are the aisles. Although you may see it as confusing and unnecessary, a hashtag actually allows you to organize content and track conversation topics based on specific keywords. For example, if your business offers handmade soap, you can include #handcraftedsoap and/or #artisansoap to join the conversation and expose your product to larger audience. By making your brand more discoverable like this, hashtag can help improve your brand recognition, boost your conversion rate, and improve your customer loyalty.
Hashtag widespread use started from Twitter, but now you can see it almost everywhere, especially on Instagram, even Facebook and Google+. However, many of us don’t really know how to use hashtag properly. Some people even seem to add hashtag to everything, then simply wish something will happen.
Have you ever seen a tweet and/or Instagram caption like this: #we #love #our #product #you #should #too? Well, this is one example of hashtag misuse that could repeal your potential customer away. Fret not, these tips below will help you to be a hashtag pro in a flash!
Do research beforehand.
On Instagram, engagement are highest on posts with 11+ hashtags. Meanwhile on Twitter, tweets with hashtags get two times more engagement than tweets without. However, when you use more than two hashtags on Twitter, your engagement actually drops by an average of 17%. The same thing applies on Facebook, i.e., too many hashtags leads to less interaction. See the difference here? This means, you can’t use the same hashtags on all social media channel.
Do learn from the best.
Use hashtags that are trending within your target audience. To do this, first you need to find out how influencers are using hashtags. Compile some usernames of people and brands in your industry whom you admire, also your competitors, and take a peek what/how many hashtags they’re using.
Do use your brand.
Brand specific hashtag is great way to encourage people to interact with your brand. You can use it to link all of your social media campaign such as contest, quiz, giveaways, as well as to track what people are saying about your brand. To find out about us more on social media, try search #MoccaMonday on Instagram or #MoccaTips on Twitter!
Don’t use something irrelevant.
While you consider which hashtag to use, remember the rule of thumb: only use hashtags that are relevant to your brand and industry, therefore your target audience can easily find you when they search the keywords. Think what keyword they would use to search for your service. On the other hand, continually using irrelevant hashtags on social media also risk someone flag you as spammer, thus hurts your brand reputation in the long run.
Don’t be generic.
Try to add value to the conversation. Simply adding hashtag on your photo without any context is not only confusing, but also not very attractive to the audience. Pro-tip: don’t clutter your captions with hashtags on Instagram. Hide them either by put in the comment section below your post or bury them beneath dots and line breaks.
Now that you are a hashtag pro, find out how you can use it to integrate your online and offline marketing strategy. Feel free to reach us to discuss your social media marketing strategy anytime!