Hashtag Marketing Guide to Boost Social Media
Hashtag marketing is a tactic that involves using hashtags to tag and track content on social media platforms. It helps users find and interact with similar content, expanding reach and engagement. Hashtags are essential for social media marketing because they make content more discoverable and allow brands to label and locate niche material. By incorporating hashtags, brands can enhance their reach, engagement, and awareness.
Also, hashtags provide context in posts, making it easier for consumers to find brands.
For instance, suppose a fashion brand wants to promote its new collection on Instagram. They might create a branded hashtag like #FashionForward and ask followers to use it when posting pictures of themselves wearing the brand's clothing. This approach raises awareness while making it simple for the brand to track user-generated content about its products.
Table of Contents
Benefits of Using Hashtags in Marketing
Brands stand to gain from using hashtags in their marketing efforts. One significant advantage is that hashtags can make posts more visible, increasing their odds of being seen by a wider audience. Users are likelier to stumble upon brands' content by searching for or following specific hashtags. That reach and exposure will generally lead to higher engagement and greater brand recognition.
Hashtags also help brands ensure that their target audience discovers their content. Using relevant tags, companies can make it easier for people interested in particular topics or trends to find what they have posted. For example, a fitness brand might use #FitnessMotivation or #HealthyLifestyle to appeal to individuals who care about wellness and staying fit. By targeting communities with specific tags, brands can connect with potential customers and foster engagement.
Coca-Cola's #ShareACoke effort exemplifies how a company used hashtags effectively in its marketing strategy. The soft drink giant swapped out its logo on Coke bottles for popular names and encouraged people to share pictures of their personalised drinks alongside the hashtag #ShareACoke. Consequently, not only did the campaign generate lots of user-generated content, but it also created a sense among consumers that Coca-Cola was speaking directly to them.
Creating an Effective Hashtag Marketing Strategy
Creating a well-defined hashtag marketing strategy is crucial for brands that want to establish their presence on social media platforms and effectively reach their target audience. Here are some critical steps you should follow when creating your strategy.
Research and identify popular, relevant hashtags: To find out which hashtags are trending and what competition exists, study relevant industry conversations using the search function on each platform. Social listening tools will also help you determine which hashtags are prevalent in your industry or niche. These tools provide insights into how often different hashtags are being used, how many people they're reaching and the level of engagement these users have with them.
Use branded hashtags consistently across all platforms: By consistently using an appropriate branded hashtag across every social media platform they have a presence on, brands can increase awareness of their brand and monitor how effective specific campaigns are (see more below). A branded hashtag is unique to your company.
For example, Starbucks successfully uses #StarbucksLover and #StarbucksUK when posting content related to its products on Instagram and Twitter. Consistently using this hashtag helps raise awareness of specific marketing initiatives while creating communities around different topics.
Use trending hashtags strategically: Brands can use trending hashtags to get visibility for their posts among a broader audience than would usually be possible. Getting involved in conversations already happening around popular subjects or incorporating other relevant tags into posts about those subjects could generate new followers or raise general awareness.
During Super Bowl Sunday, many brands join the conversation by including the tag #SuperBowl in posts even if they aren't directly linked with American Football; doing so aligns them with a topic guaranteed to be talked about by lots of eyeballs.
Successful Hashtag Campaigns
Brands seeking to create hashtag campaigns can gain valuable insights and inspiration by studying successful ones. Here are a few worth noting:
The ALS Association's #IceBucketChallenge campaign: The ALS Association's 2014 #IceBucketChallenge became viral. Participants were filmed pouring a bucket of ice water over their heads, then challenged others to do the same within 24 hours or donate to support research into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Thanks in part to the heavy use of the hashtag, millions of Ice Bucket Challenge posts appeared on social media.
Airbnb's #LiveThere campaign: Airbnb launched its global #LiveThere effort to encourage travellers “to experience cities like locals,” according to the company. The brand showcased user-generated content from Airbnb guests and hosts, highlighting exciting activities and local perspectives. Using the hashtag extensively, Airbnb created an online community around itself and encouraged users to share their own travel stories.
Nike's #JustDoIt campaign: Nike has successfully used this slogan in various efforts for years, encouraging people who have athletic goals or face other personal challenges not just to wish for things but to take action. Many such efforts have featured athletes discussing how they've overcome obstacles toward achieving significant goals—and all have prominently displayed some version of Just Do It.
Tips for Finding Popular and Relevant Hashtags
For brands to reach their intended audience effectively, they must find popular and relevant hashtags. The following tips will assist you in doing this:
Use social media listening tools for hashtag research: Brands can identify popular and relevant hashtags by using social media listening tools. By keeping an eye on conversations and trends within their industry, these tools provide real-time data about the popularity of different hashtags and how much people engage with them.
Research trending hashtags and review competition: To locate popular and relevant hashtags for your campaigns, analyse which ones are already used by competitors or research trending hashtags. This keeps your brand up-to-date with industry trends and puts you into meaningful exchanges.
Strategies for combining branded and general hashtags: Combining a company's branded hashtag (for example, #GlowingSkin) with a relevant general one (#SkincareTips) increases visibility/engagement by inserting itself into existing conversation while promoting the brand.
Avoiding hashtag spamming while maintaining relevance: Whilst posting, it's crucial not to overuse them or use them too randomly such that posts appear spammy. Focus on a specific tagging strategy designed around relevancy to the target audience/content – using fewer tags but most targeted at the right people who will engage more than others.
Implementing these tips will help brands discover popular/relevant Instagram hashtags that resonate with their target audience and increase the visibility/reach of content posted on social media platforms.
Tracking and Measuring the Success of Hashtag Marketing Efforts
To assess the effectiveness of a hashtag marketing campaign, it's essential to track and measure its success. Here's how brands can do that:
Why tracking matters: Measuring the success of a hashtag lets you assess how your campaigns are performing and make data-driven decisions about what to do next. It also gives you insights into engagement, reach and impressions generated by specific hashtags, so you know what's working well.
Metrics for measuring success: There are various metrics you can use to gauge the success of your hashtag campaigns, including volume (the number of posts featuring your chosen hashtag), user numbers (the unique users who engaged with the tag), engagement rate, reach and impressions – plus how much user-generated content is being produced as part of your campaign. By analysing these different metrics, you'll see if your drive has had an impact.
Tools such as Sprout Social for tracking and comparison: Sprout Social offers analytics capability to track how specific hashtags perform with others. Hashtag tracking allows brands like yours to keep tabs on which tags serve best; sentiment analysis helps show whether sentiment around particular tags is positive or negative, while performance comparisons let you benchmark against other businesses in similar markets.
For instance, your fashion brand wants to know more about a new campaign with a custom-made hashtag on Instagram. A tool like Sprout Social will give an at-a-glance overview, including post number totals broken down by date range, engagement rate per 1k followers, and estimated total potential reach.
By employing tools like this, brands can get a good sense of their performance across multiple social networks and see what rivals might be doing.
Tracking and measuring successes means gathering insight into what works now and seeing where improvement may lie when it comes time for future marketing strategies involving hashtags.
Hashtag Marketing Best Practices
If you want to get the most out of hashtag marketing, follow some best practices. Give these tips a go:
Understand the rules on each platform: Different social media websites have different guidelines about using hashtags. You must understand and adhere to those rules if you want your hashtag marketing efforts to work. For example, Twitter recommends using no more than two hashtags per tweet; Instagram has a higher number.
Keep it simple and relevant: When picking your hashtags, choose something easy for people to understand and relevant for them – or risk failing in your campaign objectives. Complicated and obscure may not resonate with your target audience – while simple ones can attract engagement from people who would be interested.
Check what the hashtag signifies: Before using a particular hashtag, you must check what it means so there are no unintended consequences or damage caused to the brand's reputation. Investigate its meaning before use.
Tailor for each platform: Each social media website has its best practices regarding hashtags – things like the optimum number per post, etc. You need to tailor yours accordingly if they will fulfil their purpose correctly.
By getting the points right, brands can ensure maximum value from their hashtag campaigns on social media websites such as Instagram or Twitter.
Boosting Organic Reach on Instagram with Hashtags
If you're looking to boost your organic reach on Instagram and attract users interested in specific topics or trends, strategically using hashtags can be a game changer. Here's how you can get the most out of hashtags on Instagram:
- Use precise and relevant hashtags – Using clear and relevant hashtags on Instagram helps increase the organic reach of posts, attracting users interested in specific topics or trends. Using hashtags accurately representing your content is much more effective than something generic like #food.
- Avoid shadow bans by using appropriate hashtags – Instagram may shadow ban accounts that use inappropriate or irrelevant hashtags; therefore, it is essential to use appropriate ones aligned with your brand and relevant to the content you're posting to avoid any restrictions.
- Monitor campaign performance through branded hashtags – Creating and using branded hashtags on Instagram allows you to monitor how well campaigns perform and increase brand presence on the platform. Branded Hashtags make it easy for brands to track engagement and reach around specific campaign-related content, providing valuable insights into their initiatives' success.
- Join trending topics with the correct hashtag for increased awareness – Engaging with trending topics on Instagram through relevant hashtags lets brands increase their brand awareness by reaching a larger audience pool at no additional cost while being part of real-time conversations around these subjects.
For instance, if an adventure travel blogger wants his posts seen by people interested in outdoor activities or travel, he can include popular adventure-travel-related tags such as #ExploreTheOutdoors or #AdventureAwaits, which gives his post visibility among people genuinely keen about those things.
By implementing these strategies, brands can leverage Instagram Hashtagging methods to grow their organic reach, increasing engagement and boosting product/service awareness scores.
Tracking and Analysing Hashtag Performance
Tracking and analysing hashtags' results is crucial to evaluate the success of their advertising campaigns and make data-driven decisions. Here, we tell you how brands can track and analyse hashtag performance.
Why tracking hashtag performance is vital for marketing campaigns: Following a hashtag's performance helps brands evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and allows them to make data-driven choices to optimise future campaigns. By tracking a hashtag's performance, brands get insights into how often the hashtags were used and engagement levels generated by using them – in other words, what worked well or less well.
Metrics and tools for measuring hashtag success: There are multiple metrics that brands can use to measure a hashtag campaign's success. These include how often the campaign was mentioned on social media platforms, reach, impressions, user-generated content (UGC), engagement rate, and number of unique users engaging with the campaign.
By studying these metrics closely, marketers will be better positioned to ascertain whether their campaign achieves its strategic goals but if they need to change tack in some way.
For example, say a food delivery company ran an Instagram campaign based around #tryusnow. It could track mentions of #tryusnow throughout its duration to see if people were still talking about it towards the end of its run.
Analysing reach, engagement and impressions yielded by hashtags: Analysing a given set of hashtags' reach – i.e. who saw posts containing those tags or clicked on them – along with any comments or likes via those tags helps reveal just who is engaging with your brand online. All this information can then be used when planning future activities.
Tools such as Sprout Social offer analytics that allows you to compare different sets of tags against each other so you'll know which ones resonated most strongly among your customers/clients/stakeholders compared with others in relative terms.
This tool will also allow you to assess a hashtag campaign's effectiveness, spot emerging trends, and make strategic decisions accordingly.
Hashtag marketing is a powerful way of increasing reach, engagement and brand awareness on social media platforms. But by following best practices (e.g. leveraging hashtags on Instagram), getting stuck into conversations and competitions, and measuring the performance of hashtags, brands can ensure that their hashtag marketing efforts are as effective as possible.
