The Use and Importance of Hashtags in Social Media Marketing

For the past years of social media evolution, there have been a lot of trends and developments that were added to improve the user experience of people. You could say that using hashtags is one of those trends, but of course, we also know that using hashtags or a hash symbol “#” is not a new trend in social media. Although it may appear as just a part of the caption you include in social media posts, it is not just for that. 

What is a hashtag?

A hashtag serves a greater purpose than what some may think it only has as it helps categorize or group contents for your audience. By including a hash symbol to a certain keyword (ex: #SocialMediaMarketing), people can easily find a specific content that is relevant to their interests on social media. Online posts that use hashtags increase their visibility, which can result in a “trending post.” Twitter was the first social media platform to use hashtags. But now, social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn are also using hashtags. 

Why use hashtags for your business?

While you may not see hashtags as an important part of your business’s social media posts, here are some reasons why you should start using them:

1. Hashtags help your target customers and other businesses discover contents that are relevant to your brand.
2. Serves as a label to find social media updates from your business.
3. When a post contains hashtags that are relevant to your customers’ interests, it will most likely cause them to take time to visit your page and perform an action.
4. You will get to learn more about what your target customers need just by simply searching for a specific hashtag.
5. The right hashtags provide additional information to your target audience, increasing brand awareness, following community, and social shares for your business. 

Why are hashtags important in social media marketing?

Social media marketing is all about connecting with your audience or customers in a more friendly, engaging way to generate leads, boost brand awareness, and expand sales online. Using hashtags together with relevant keywords in your social media posts helps increase your brand visibility and make your business discoverable by people across different social media platforms. This is why it serves a vital role in the marketing of your products and services on social media. The people who will visit your page are basically potential customers or qualified leads that are interested in your product or service.

Here are tips on how you can effectively use hashtags for social media marketing:

1. Avoid Overusing Hashtags

Since using a hashtag in your social media posts can boost brand awareness, some businesses tend to overuse them and put a lot in just one post. But the reality is that when you include too many hashtags in your post, it will result in less audience engagement. So try to limit the number of hashtags you use per post on different social media platforms and familiarize yourself with the ideal number of hashtags that will lead to better engagements, as each platform has varying hashtag frequency. 

• Twitter –  Putting 2 hashtags is already enough given the limitations in the character count. Even with just 2 hashtags, your post can already lead to engagements.

• Instagram – They allow adding up to 30 hashtags in one regular post. Unlike other platforms, using a lot of hashtags on Instagram can actually get good engagement for your posts or content. However, it is still advisable not to maximize all those hashtags and limit them to 11 at most to avoid being spammy. 

• Facebook – It works differently. Why? Because your brand posts can get engagement even without hashtags. Although, including 2 hashtags in your Facebook post (1 trending hashtag and 1 specific brand hashtag) can also lead to engagements and boost brand awareness.

• Tiktok – You can use at least 4-5 hashtags in one post to get better reach and engagement.

• Pinterest – Like Twitter, 2 hashtags are already enough for your audience on Pinterest to find relevant content from you.

2. Keep Your Hashtags Simple

You don’t need to be all wordy with your hashtags. Keeping them short and simple will help your audience remember your brand easily. The shorter or more catchy the hashtags are, the better the engagement and audience reach they will get. If you opt to use long and hard to pronounce hashtags, you won’t expect good results. Take note that your customers are after the relevant hashtags only, so they wouldn’t really be paying attention to irrelevant hashtags, let alone, a long one. Unclear, generic, or misleading hashtags will also not produce good results. 

3. Make Use of Trending Hashtags

People are mostly drawn or interested in what’s currently popular or basically what’s trending now. So to widen your audience reach and boost brand awareness, include trending hashtags in your social media posts. This trending hashtag, of course, also has to be relevant to your business. We suggest that you search for trending hashtags that can be included in your post. Using the right trending hashtags for your business helps your brand gain visibility in the social media world. 

4. Create Unique Hashtags

Given the number of businesses on different social media platforms, you have to think of ways for your business to stand out one way or another. Create a unique hashtag that’s easy to remember for your customers and at the same time relevant to what they are looking for. Targeting the right audience for your business also means that you have to be specific about your hashtags. Keep in mind that the more specific the hashtags are in a post, the better audience reach it will have. 

5. Know the Right Hashtags to Place

This tip mainly suggests that you should be mindful of the hashtags you include in every post. Not all hashtags are relevant or appropriate. Avoid using hashtags that can be misinterpreted or perceived as something that’s negative by your audience. Do your research on the hashtag and what people commonly say in their posts when using that specific hashtag. Think before you post. 

If you’re looking for someone to help you with the social media marketing of your business, contact us today, and we’ll be glad to help you!