Hashtags are useful when used correctly, and annoying when overused.
Understanding what a hashtag can do for your content and company will help you to use it wisely, with strategic intent, to build trust over time.
Here are a few tips, ideas, and articles for more information:
Choose a Hashtag for your business that is short, catchy, and memorable. Promote it and use it on all your posts to build a file about your product, service, or industry.
Get your posts in front of your target audience by using specific hashtags and not general ones. For example, use #newmoms instead of #parenting if you sell baby products.
Research hashtags to find ones that match your business and target market and create content around them. This way their use will be more natural and in line with the post.
Refrain from an 'one fits all' approach by knowing how each social media platform uses hashtags and polite hashtag etiquette.
Don’t hashtag every word. Ask yourself, what is the post really about and whom am I marketing to with this specific post?
Use trending hashtags only if they fit with your business, story, product, industry, or service. Then create content for that specific trending tag. You'll have to be quick trends change fast.
Hashtags are about adding your content to a topic.
Think of it this way, you create a great post on hamburgers and you want people who eat hamburgers to see it, so you put it into the social media platform’s file, #hamburgers. As a consumer of information when I go to the file, #hamburgers I expect to see hamburgers, not books. If I see a post on a book about building a house in the #hamburger file, I am not going to trust that person because they spammed the #hamburger file.
I hope that makes it clearer.
Hashtags are easy to use and can help you reach more of your targeted market. Here are some articles written by the experts on how to use hashtags the right way.
Beware the Hashtag Overuse
It can be tempting to stuff your post with hashtags, even hashtags that have nothing to do with the post itself, to get more eyeballs on your content. This practice is not well received and considered spam. We all hate spam and I'm not talking about the canned ham kind.
Some platforms like Instagram are hashtag friendly and you can use as many as allowed, on Instagram that is 30 hashtags. However, only if you are using hashtags that match the photo you posted.
Others like LinkedIn and Facebook frown on too many hashtags and you are better off limiting them to three or risk having your profile flagged as spammy.
Add hashtags to your posts, but use them wisely, to be part of a conversational topic, not as a way to advertise.
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Shannon Peel is a Professional Marketing Manager and Storyteller. Her company, MarketAPeel, helps Professionals define their personal brands and tell their story through different channels, including writing their book.
