Whichever social media platforms your brand includes in its strategy, knowing how to use hashtags will do wonders to boost both reach and engagement. Your brand can do a lot more than just relying on popular hashtags like #ThrowbackThursday or #MondayMotivation.
Below we show you the basics and break down how to effectively use hashtags that are specific to your brand.
Let’s get started.
What is a hashtag?
A hashtag is essentially a label for content. It helps others who are interested in a certain topic on social media, quickly find content on that same topic. Hashtags also help make your content more discoverable and searchable, enabling you to reach more people.
Hashtags dos and don’ts
- Always start with the ‘#’ symbol and don’t include punctuation or spaces.
- Make all your social accounts public. That way, new people can discover your content through the hashtags you use.
- Don’t make your hashtags too long by stringing too many words together. The best hashtags are usually short and easy to remember.
- Use specific and relevant hashtags. If they are too obscure, users most likely won’t be able to find them because they won’t know what to look for.
- Limit the number of hashtags you use and only include the most important ones.
Why use hashtags?
There are several reasons to include hashtags in your posts as seen below.
1. Increase engagement
Including hashtags in your posts allows you to take part in conversations centred around that hashtag. This can lead to greater engagement such as likes, shares, comments and even new follows.
2. Build brand awareness
Creating a branded hashtag can be an effective way to promote your business and encourage more conversations. Cheerios for example created an awareness campaign for Valentine’s Day that encouraged followers to purchase Cheerios cereal and find a heart inside each box. Once followers found the heart, they were encouraged to take a photo and share it on social media using the hashtag #CheeriosHeartHuntSweepstakes for a chance to win cash prizes.
3. Support social issues
Using hashtags connected to social issues outside of your business is a great way to show some support. You can also create your own branded social hashtag to get people to support a social cause of your own. For example, the popular hashtag #LetsTalk relates to the issue of mental health and helps to raise awareness.
4. Add context
For a social media platform like Twitter, you don’t always have the space to say everything you would like to say. You have 280 characters. So using a hashtag to contextualise what you are talking about is helpful and a great way to get your point across. For example, NASA celebrated its 50th anniversary of the moon landing back in 2019. For context, they used the hashtag, #Apollo50th in their post.
5. Help your audience to discover you
By using a few popular hashtags, people can find you. For example, if you use the hashtag #FridayFeeling in your posts, someone who follows that hashtag will find you in their feed. People who share the same interests as your brand will naturally want to follow you.
Popular hashtags 2021
Using popular hashtags like #ChooseDay or #FlashbackFriday are fun ways for your brand to join a wider social media conversation.
Some of the most popular Instagram hashtags include:
- #love (2.1B posts)
- #instagood (1.3B posts)
- #fashion (972M posts)
- #photooftheday (931M posts)
- #photography (769M posts)
- #beautiful (749M posts)
- #instagram (691M posts)
- #picoftheday (655M posts)
- #nature (639M posts)
- #happy (639M posts)
Of course, popular hashtags differ depending on what social media platform you’re using. For example on LinkedIn, popular hashtags include #leadership and #productivity.
Popular hashtags are mostly universal and aren’t specific to any industry or a theme. They also don’t say a lot about your brand. So it’s best to identify and include niche hashtags that are relevant to your brand and what you represent as well.
How to find the best hashtags for your brand
To find the best hashtags for your brand, you need to start by doing some research.
1. Have a look at social media competitors
Do a competitive analysis on social media. Start by gathering insights about your competitors specific to your brand’s niche. Then make a note of which hashtags they use the most as well as how many hashtags they use per post.
2. Note which hashtags are trending
RiteTag generates trending hashtag suggestions based on your content to help you. You’ll see the best hashtags to get your post seen immediately, as well as hashtags to get your post seen over time. If you want to see a detailed breakdown of the hashtags, click “Get Report”.
3. Find similar or related hashtags
If you already have a good idea of which hashtags are working well for your brand, think about using related or similar hashtags. These hashtags might be more specific than the popular hashtags you’ve been using, which could help you connect with a more targeted audience.
4. Successful hashtags on past posts
Look at your most popular past posts to see which hashtags were used. If you notice that your popular posts always contain a few of the same hashtags, make a point to include them in your future posts.
If you need assistance with social media for your brand, speak to us for more information.
