Hashtags are used on virtually every social network and if they aren’t available, there usually is something something similar to it. Reddit is a social network that doesn’t use hashtags, but the structure of the network works almost the same way.
The key to hashtags is search-ability. If you write a post, create a video, or a picture you’ll undoubtedly like it to be viewed by a certain group of people.
This article will show you exactly how to find the hashtags in your industry you need to pinpoint. Then use the easy to follow strategy to create content that will get engagement and hence build a larger social following.
Getting your social following to the numbers you need is not a matter of talent. It’s simply knowing how to use the tools available and combining creativity, hard work, and consistency.
Forget about becoming a master at making the perfect video, getting the copy just right, and getting the lighting just right for your selfie. The world of social media doesn’t require any of that. What it requires is the three things I mentioned before, so put your head down and make the best content you can.
“If you build it they will come.” – Field of Dreams.
What Are Hashtags?
Without getting into a too technical definition, hashtags are a way to put your message in front of the right people.
Think about Hashtags like a bulletin board. Each hashtag is its own board and when you create a message and use a Hashtag, it becomes searchable so a reader can find it.
The big difference between bulletin board and hashtags is that the hashtag gets more cluttered everyday and they remain that way forever. I will explain how you can make sure your messages either stay at the top or at least stay there longer than most.
How to Find The Right Hashtags for Your Business
It not hard to find the best hashtags for your business. There are easy ways and hard ways.
The easy way is to go to Hashtagify.me and find out what the trending hashtags are for you industry. Simply type in what you do and any related fields and you’ll see the hashtags that you need to get to the top of as soon as possible.
Hashtags are the gateway to your customers on social media. They help you get your message to the right people and help you get traffic to your website.
The hard way is to use the apps themselves. You can search your industry and find which ones are the best, however, those are not necessarily the hashtags you should utilize to build your brand. If you’re pinpointing the largest hashtags you’ll simply get buried in minutes sometimes. Later on, I’ll give you a strategy for posting regularly to the best hashtags on Instagram and Twitter.
How Do Hashtags Help You Get More Website Traffic?
Every time you post to a specific hashtag, you tell everyone that is interested in your business to check you out. The way you get more people clicking to your website is to create better and better content that builds interest in who you are and what you’re all about.
I want to highlight the difference between using hashtags on Instagram and Twitter, because the way they work is a little different. The main difference is your ability to link out to your website.
Instagram is a fantastic social media platform to use hashtags and build your following and website traffic. There are tons of people that use it everyday and no, it’s not just filled with bikini models and dogs. The perception of Instagram is a little skewed, because of what most people use it for. However, marketers like Gary Vaynerchuk, call Instagram the “business development tool of 2018.”
The reason for this is if you download the app and look up your industry, you’ll find your industry on there guaranteed. Search your industry and you’ll see how many posts there are attached to each hashtag. The hashtags you want to target are within the 50k – 250k range. Simply put, those hashtags get less traffic, but you’re posts will stay on the top for longer. The more time your posts stay at the top, the more engagement and likes they will get. This will help your ability to be a top poster for that particular hashtag.
Find 30 hashtags and post to them every day. Put the hashtags in the comment section and post to them 5 times a day.
You can double your efforts by attaching the hashtags to the post and then 30 more in the comments. Some people don’t like this, but it will help you get more followers, so do it.
Instagram doesn’t allow you to link directly to an article within your posts, so you have to make each post interesting enough so that your customers decide to go to your profile and check out your website. This is why just throwing products on your Instagram doesn’t work. You might do ok if your products are great, but Instagram is about content and making that visual connection. Stick to the basics and you’ll see your business grow leaps and bounds.
Twitter is the ultimate lead generator for business. Despite it’s downturn it’s still huge and great for any business.
Here’s what you can do…
Create tons of content: video, memes, infographics, blogs, and whitepapers. Then take all of them and post one of them every hour to the best hashtags you can find. You can every reach out to people that you’d like to connect with and give them your content. This is a great way to reach out to busy people, by offering them ideas and useful tips to help them make more money.
You might think that one post per hour is excessive, but think about it like this…
Everyone is following tons of people on Twitter. When you look at your feed, do you see every post? Of course not.
To ensure that your content is something that people see, you have to post very frequently. If you don’t, you’ll get lost in the shuffle and forgotten to someone that posts more often. Heck! Donald Trump posts 12 times per day minimum. If you’re reaching out to an international audience you have to post 24 hours a day. Use a program like Buffer or Agorapulse to set them in advance. The best marketers set their social media on auto-pilot for months in advance.
Which Hashtags Work The Best For Your Brand?
Every brand should focus on the hashtags that will build your brand the fastest. That is, of course, different for every industry and every brand within that industry. You have to know your special sauce and figure out where you can expand your brand.
The best hashtags are sometimes not related to your brand. If you look for it, you’ll start to see fast food restaurants advertising on sports or video game hashtags. Finding out where you customers are and putting your best messages in front of them when they are expecting to see you is a great strategy to follow.
Your special sauce and what sets you apart from your competitors can be represented by where you attach your messages. You should be known for posting to those other hashtags and they shouldn’t be about your business. They should show you humanity and show that you’re interesting in more than the money of your customers.
How Important is Video?
No matter how many people post on social networks, the ones that make videos and do live streams do the best. I’ve done all kinds of posts and the videos always to do better than others.
It comes down to reaching your audience and making an emotional connection. Video is simply the easiest way to make that connection, so get over your fears and just do it. You can thank me later.
That being said, creating content is all about being creative and speaking to the audience directly. Being overly professional is something a lot of marketers really struggle with on social media. Loosen up and figure out your sweet spot.
Maybe your brand needs more written content than video. If it’s a brand about writing then I would definitely produce more written than video content. Still, make sure you’re putting it into your content strategy, but focus on what you’re good at.
Creating a well-rounded strategy is the key to keeping your followers interested in what you do. People will get bored if you’re just producing videos over and over again. If your bread and butter is video, then do 60% video, 20% Memes, and 20% written with an image. These kinds of splits are great for almost every business. Keep that in mind when you decide on what to create next.
For more information on creating better content for you business, check out these articles: Facebook Video Marketing Gets a Big Boost For 2018 Advertisers {Part 1} and Facebook Video Monetization Gets a Big Boost For 2018 Advertisers {Part 2}.
