Hashtags are a crucial part of your social media marketing strategy, using hashtags allows your audience to find you easily and it’s an easy way to find relevant content to display.
Instagram and Twitter are where hashtags are mostly used, and if you aren’t already utilizing hashtags on these platforms then you should definitely start. Before you fire just any hashtag alongside your post, you should know which ones are popular and be tracking the use of your chosen hashtags.
How to use hashtags to your advantage
You can use hashtags in various ways throughout many social media platforms, you can use trending hashtags to attract users to your content, use your own branded hashtags, or use an incentive hashtag to get your audience to share their own content using your hashtag.
Now you see how simple implementing effective hashtags can be, here are our top tips on the best ways to implement hashtags into your social media strategy.
How can you find the best hashtags for your content?
If you have an idea of hashtags that you would like to use, then you should first use the search bar on the social platform to see if its a popular hashtag and search other related hashtags to see if there’s any more suited to your content that will gain you more attraction.
If you want to search hashtags for Twitter, we recommend that you use RiteTag, which will give you a list of other related hashtags when you type in your chosen hashtag. It also tells you how many tweets use a certain hashtag per hour, retweets, and people that are seeing the tweet per hour. This tool uses color-coding to indicate what hashtags are currently popular ranging from green (popular hashtag) to red (overused).
You can also use RiteTag for Instagram hashtags, but it doesn’t give you as much in-depth information as it does for Twitter. You can check how many people are using the hashtag, how many posts use that hashtag, and how many people follow that hashtag.
You can use Sprout Social to review how certain hashtags are performing, using their listening tool you can find out what people are talking about, and the topic that it’s based around; this means you can choose a hashtag around these topics so you can be assured it will be effective and get engagement.
How many hashtags do I need to use throughout each social channel?
- Twitter (2 hashtags)
- Facebook (2 Hashtags)
- Pinterest (0 hashtags)
- Instagram (between 25-20 hashtags)
- LinkedIn (2-3 hashtags)
How to monitor the performance of your hashtags?
If you want to monitor your hashtags on Twitter you can use Twitter analytics. Using hashtags allows you to boost your organic traffic, but you should be tracking hashtags to ensure your maximising performance.
Using Sprout Social you can monitor how your hashtags are performing in terms of popularity, reach, interactions, and users across all platforms.
Which hashtags should you be tracking?
You will be using various types of hashtags throughout your posts over social media, so here’s each one grouped and why you need to track them.
Tracking branded hashtags
Branded hashtags mean tagging your company within the hashtag, for example, Microsoft uses #Microsoft. Some businesses may make reference to a certain product or service besides the hashtag if they are posting about that product or service for example #MicrosoftOffice.
Tracking branded hashtags means you can see if people are talking about your business directly, you can use tools like Sprout Social or Hootsuite to monitor conversations around your branded hashtag.
Tracking trending hashtags
You can use Twitter to check what hashtags are trending by tapping the magnifying glass to see Twitter explore. Underneath the hashtag allows you to see the number of times the hashtag has been used, so you can see if it’s going to be a popular hashtag to use within your content.
Tracking event hashtags
If you’re hosting, attending, or posting about a large event you should be hashtagging about it. Taking part in live-tweeting is the best way to get attraction around your event. You can use Hootsuite or Sprout Social to see how many users engaged with your hashtag and if you gained any followers or reach from it. You could use the Social Listening tool on Sprout Social to search for event hashtags that are trending to find related topics.
Tracking Ad Hashtags
Using a hashtag for ads helps to create hype around a certain thing that your business is doing. For example, Apple uses different hashtags for different iPhone launches for example IphoneXS. Creating new hashtags for the launch of a product or service will build new attraction to the ad, tracking this is also effective for comparing to other ads to see what is most engaging for your audience.