We thought we should blog some hashtags refresh uses for your social media. It’s always good to get a reminder.
Definition:
A hashtag is a word or a group of words preceded by a pound (#) sign, which is used to categorize and find conversations around a particular topic or trend.
Did you know?
The very first hashtag was tweeted on August 23, 2007, by Chris Messina, a product designer and internet consultant.
Why use hashtags?
Why not? They are now practically a currency on social media platforms and are really useful for a number of reasons:
- Finding out what is trending
- Following breaking news
- Sharing your interests
- Following your competitors
- Finding topics of interest immediately
But HOW you use can show your audience whether you are a Hashtag beginner or a seasoned pro!
Top tips:
- Keep it simple, don’t cram #asmanywordsasyoupossiblecanintoahashtag – it won’t work
- Hashtags with Caps for each word does make it easy to read, so if you are using more then two to three words, try this #SeeWhatIMean
- Hashtags don’t work with punctuation, so don’t include any, if they don’t make sense without punctuation, they probably wouldn’t make sense as a hashtag anyway!
- Don’t go hashtag crazy, some platform can tolerate it, some don’t. We have created another blog to give you the low down platform by platform, see our blog page.
- Don’t use a #Hashtag # For #Every #Word in your posts, it’s not big and it’s not clever!
Selecting the right hashtag for your business can come down to some simple research to see what could be developed or what is already out there which you can piggyback on.
Using hashtags that are too specific for your target audience is not going to be picked up and you are wasting your time. Specifically, hashtags with serial numbers of kit you use or acronyms of terminology in your industry can sometimes just be lost in translation.
There are lots of tools out there to help your research the popular hashtags, which we have listed below. But DO consider how the popular ones are used and if you have a chance of being found within all of the chatter. If a hashtag has a huge following of say, 65 million, is your small business likely to be spotted? It is worth delving deeper to find less popular ones with the field that you can start to make you own.
Popular hashtag research tools:
- Display Purposes
- Hashtagify
- The actual platforms, Twitter and Instagram
Research into the use of the hashtags is key as we all remember the #Susanalbumparty debacle!
Make sure you do due diligence into what an existing hashtag represents and if it is right for your brand!
If you would like to know more about hashtag usage for your business, then please get in touch. Also, make sure you have a read of our linking blog on Hashtags coming soon or take a look at any of our social media blogs – here!
Call 01642 712718 for more information or email me, [email protected]
