Localise
Local hashtags are best suited to businesses that have a local presence, helping you engage and connect with customers that are nearby. These hashtags will help keep track of what is trending in your local area, from there you will identify the relevance you have to local trends and events and capitalise on that to gain exposure.
Brand Awareness
A unique brand hashtag is an effective way to encourage your customers to create a conversation and community around your products and services. It’s important that your hashtag is punchy and catchy to stick in the mind of your customer. If your company name is too generic or is prone to interpretation, the creation of a tagline or phrase will be the best way to identify yourselves e.g. Nike’s ‘Just Do It’.
Call-to-Action
At the end of the day, the purpose of creating a hashtag is to encourage your audience to take action, whether it be through shares, retweets, or purchasing your product. This traditional method is easily applied to social media, with the use of CTA hashtag being mutually beneficial. It gives the consumer a sense of participation and a platform to share their content with a wider audience. It’s important that your CTA hashtag is doable as it is unlikely to engage your audience if not. If done right, you should see your hashtag being used across platforms with audiences taking the appropriate action.
Trending
Weighing in on trending topics is an excellent way to have your business seen by a group larger than your typical audience. There are staple hashtags such as annual holidays and events, it’s important to jump on trends that are relevant to your business or products to ensure maximum success and exposure with your target audience.
Community Building
Social media platforms now allow you to follow individual hashtags, this works to the advantage of businesses as it allows you to create communities and boost your branding and reputation. Hashtags not only help to group your audience into one place but for the better of a community by bringing awareness to problems and banding together to eradicate these issues.
Learn What Works for You
All businesses are different, this also means that the hashtags used by one company may not necessarily be the most effective to promote your brand. Researching, utilising, and monitoring your hashtags should be an ongoing process, refining your strategy to ensure you are getting the most out of it.
Engage in Conversation with Your Audience
Hashtags are a great insight into the conversations that your target audience are having and what matters to them. Engaging in conversation on certain topics will help you enhance your reputation as a personal, friendly brand and encourage users to utilise your services.
Change Strategy for Specific Platforms
Though hashtags are used on many social platforms, it’s important to know how you use hashtags across different platforms. Learning about your platforms, how they cater to hashtags, and their effectiveness makes it easier to interchange posts to execute your desired results.
Number of Hashtags
As effective as hashtags are, it’s important that you’re mindful of how many you are using in your posts. This is network-specific, but overuse of hashtags can take away from your message and fail to attract your desired audience. Less is more, using 1 or 2 shorter, specific hashtags are more visually appealing on the eye, making it more memorable and create a bigger impact.