5 Hashtag Marketing Strategies to Use in Your Next Social Media Campaign
It’s 2022 and hashtags are still going strong. We remember when Twitter first introduced the hashtag in 2009 (can you believe hashtags have been around for over ten years?!). In the beginning, they were used to categorize posts into categories, but now that the hashtag has been around for a good decade, marketers have learned how to turn them into a tool for massive social growth and visibility. Here are 5 hashtag marketing strategies to use in your next social media marketing campaign:
- Create a hashtag for your brand
Do you recognize any of these famous hashtags? #ShareACoke #OreoHorrorStories #LetsDoLunch? These hashtags were created to spark a conversation amongst the companies followers. Domino Pizza’s #LetsDoLunch hashtag gave every “tweeter” a discount on their next pizza order. This, of course, caused a huge influx of #LetsDoLunch mentions and earned Dominoes a lot of online visibility! Oreo replaced actors in famous horror movie clips with Oreos and tagged each one #OreoHorrorStories. See? There are so many creative ways to spin your brand into a fun, interactive hashtag.
- Be specific with your hashtag marketing
When you aren’t using one of your branded hashtags, you are probably tagging pictures and posts with content-relevant hashtags that reflect what the photo or tweet is about. Choose hashtags that are popular in the community, but make sure they apply to the content you are posting. Using the same hashtags repeatedly in your hashtag marketing campaign can get you shadow-banned from certain platforms.
- Adjust hashtag use based on the social platform you are using
Multiple hashtags aren’t welcomed on Twitter the same way they are on LinkedIn. These days, most people use only 2 hashtags in their Twitter posts. Instagram suggests up to 9, whereas LinkedIn and TikTok suggest 5. It’s important to note that going over these recommended hashtag counts can cause your posts to be marked as spam. It’s always better to use a few specific hashtags than 30 broad ones.
- Take advantage of trending hashtags
You will notice that the sidebar of Twitter has a list of the most trending hashtags for the day. If you see that one of these hashtags is relevant to your company and you feel like you could make a clever post with it, then go for it! A lot of hashtags go viral during certain holidays or global events, so make sure you are planning social posts to align with the popular hashtags that are bound to show up. Latching onto trending hashtags will help your tweet or post gain lots of traction in the online community and get more eyes on your social pages.
- Create a CTA hashtag
One of the most popular CTA hashtags of all time was #MeToo. It encouraged women to post personal stories about their experience with abuse and spurred one of the most important movements of our time. When creating a CTA hashtag, think of something fun or socially relevant for your followers to share. You might also choose to create a hashtag that connects your business to other businesses in your niche. Simply think of a fun question and ask your followers to answer it with the given hashtag.
Hashtag marketing is pretty simple if you use the right strategies. By taking advantage of trends, encouraging conversation amongst your followers, and using the right topic tags in each post, your hashtag game will always be unbeatable!
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