How to utilise hashtags within your social media strategy.

Hashtags help categorise your posts, allow users to join a trend, and also allow you to engage with an audience. They are an excellent way to drive traffic to your social media platforms and by adding hashtags into your social media posts, they can help increase your following and engagement.

Let’s provide a quick rundown of hashtags:

• Hashtags will always start with a # symbol, it must be all one word and contain no spaces or punctuation. If you do have spaces or punctuation in your hashtags, this will render them useless.
• More isn’t necessarily better, using too many hashtags can make your account look spammy and in fact could deter users from your content, we recommend a minimum of 9 and maximum of 30.
• Keep them short and sweet, #youdontwanttohaveahashtagthislong, as this is too much something shortened like #tbt (throwbacktuesday).
• If your account isn’t public, this also renders them useless, make sure you have a public account and you utilise both nice and highly searched hashtags.

Okay, so now we want to know the why. Why should I use hashtags, what benefits will they provide my business and social media?

In fact, utilising hashtags in your posts provide several benefits including:

• The ability to categorise and locate older social media posts.
• They make your content discoverable and allow you to find interesting content from other individuals and businesses.
• They allow you to interact with other social media users based on a shared theme or interest.
• They will increase visibility, allowing the posts to be viewed by more users than just your followers, as well as boost social shares.

Now we know the why, we want to dive a little bit further into some of the ways in which to utilise them:

Use trending hashtags.

A trending hashtag is a hashtag that has gained a lot of attention and popularity for a particular period of time on social media. Using a trending hashtag in your social posts will help you reach a much larger audience, meaning your posts will be viewed by a greater volume of people, not just your followers. A trending hashtag is also an excellent way to boost a brand’s visibility. When using trending hashtags, you should:

• To gain more attention for your content and brand, be the first to use trending hashtags.
• Research the ones that are trending on social platforms.
• In order to develop relationships and connect with your target market, use niche-trending hashtags.

Try not to overuse hashtags.

Hashtags are a crucial aspect of social media marketing. They increase your brand’s visibility, allowing you to reach a larger audience. Furthermore, if you use it several times on various platforms, users will find it easier to remember the hashtag.

However, each social media platform has its own appropriate hashtag frequency and crossing it can result in lower interaction.

Keep them simple and relevant.

Don’t use long, confusing or generic ones as they will most likely not provide you with effective results. Your hashtag should be brief, precise, and easy to remember. It should provide your followers with a good understanding of the subject of the discussion.

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