Hashtag Your Way to Better Social Media
The hashtag has taken over the social media world, becoming key to online marketing. When used correctly and stylishly, it can increase social media following, engagement, and more. Hashtags are one of the wires that run through everything, across people, pages, and platforms. The possibilities of a hashtag are endless and totally easy to utilize. Here are seven ways the power of the hashtag can benefit your business:
1. Increases Reach
The hashtag has embedded itself across multiple platforms, leaving few social media sites beyond its reach. It seems so simple, but it makes a world of difference. The hashtag increases chances of a post being seen and interacted with by linking a post to people other than followers and allowing the post to connect across different pages and interests. Adding just one hashtag can make all the difference in your post’s reach and engagement.
2. 24/7 Appeal
The hashtag is always there and always working. People across the globe get on social media throughout all hours of the day and night. A hashtag will continue to make connections and spread across similar interests even after you’ve signed off. A post can continue to gain interaction a year after being posted simply because someone was viewing all posts within that hashtag.
3. Enhances Follower Engagement
When building up a social media brand, follower involvement is important. If people follow a page but never get involved, they tend to get bored and unfollow. Asking followers to hashtag your company, your product, or their experience with your brand’s unique hashtag can link your social media to real people. Embolden your followers to shout out your company to their friends to help build word-of-mouth and customer loyalty.
4. Attracts Locals
If you’re a local business or targeting events or audiences in a specific area, local or location-based hashtags are essential to your social media marketing. It can also help make a company appear more trustworthy and down-to-earth as it directly relates the company to the place people call home. Find popular hashtags that are trending in your area and hop on the bandwagon.
5. Encourages Event Engagement
Every event out there has a hashtag nowadays, from weddings or vacations to festivals and conferences. It raises awareness and allows small groups of people to interact on a larger scale. Having an event-specific hashtag can also build up your more general company hashtag, as people will likely use both the event hashtag and the company hashtag. It also allows followers to be involved even if they cannot be at the event and will increase page views.
6. Start Trending
This is a jackpot in social media. When a page or post has a lot of engagement or uses a popular hashtag that gets a lot of involvement that day, the page or post will trend. For example, on Instagram it will pop up on everyone’s Discover page and thousands more people will see it that don’t follow yet. This is why it is important to follow the trending hashtags such as holidays, big news stories, etc. It will link to a new audience.
7. Connect Platforms
A helpful way to link all the different social media platforms out there is by using the same hashtags across the board. This is one way to build credibility of a certain hashtag, such as the actual business name. It also helps connect all the followers across their social media. They can tag the same hashtag when they share a post to Facebook and Twitter from their Instagram, knowing it will be recognized on all three.
The social media world is still a mystery to a lot of small businesses – but you can’t afford to be behind the curve. The hashtag allows businesses to connect posts to a brand or an idea that supports their mission statement. Take advantage of the hashtag’s possibilities and take your social media to the next level.