If you want to be successful with your social media plan, you need interesting content that will draw in an audience, as explained in our TOP TIP #5 and TOP TIP #6 blogs. However, in order for your posts to reach the desired audience, you need to find the best hashtags to use strategically.
As you may have seen, many brands use random acts of hash tagging. LOOK AWAY. This is not how it should be done.
You need to use hashtags related to your post, offering and audience. We recommend using Hashtagify, a free online tool allowing you to search and find the best hashtags related to any given topic. It’s great as it rules out wasting characters on unpopular and irrelevant hashtags. Instagram makes it much easier to tag in effective hashtags, as it gives suggestions, along with the number of posts related to it suggesting its level of popularity. Also, there is no character restriction so you can hashtag away!
Many brands don’t use hashtags as they can appear untidy and often weaken the message in a social media post. However, for a small-medium company, it is so important to use hashtags to increase your reach, otherwise, how are your audience meant to know that you’re there? See our example of using relevant, strategic hashtags for client, Wagtail Designs:
If you’re creating a competition, launching a new product, or organising an event, for example, creating a strategic hashtag is great for tying all of the pieces of your campaign together. Just think of it as a bank of relevant posts all in one convenient place. As you can imagine, if a specific hashtag is used for a competition, it is much less time consuming when it comes to choosing the winner as all valid entries will have used the supplied hashtag. If organising an event, persuading guests to use the hashtag creates a store of images and opinions of the event which is great to keep track of during the event to raise awareness and attract more guests, as well as using it as information for future events.
Social media planning and strategic hashtagging can take time. But be patient, do your research and be consistent. If you want a bit more help, give us a call.