Hashtag Best Practices: Turn Your Audience Into Advocates

You may be tired of seeing hashtags everywhere, but consumers aren’t. What evolved naturally on Twitter to help organize and retrieve conversations has grown into an essential online mechanic.

When consumers want to find you, talk to you or talk to other people about you, hashtags make it as easy as possible for them.  Connect with your audience with the keywords they’re already using, and help steer their conversations back to your brand.

Why Bother With #hashtags?

Hashtags work. Not just on Twitter, either. Use them on Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ and even Tumblr for more shares, more retweets and more social response. After all, response is what makes social marketing so dynamic.

Research shows that if you’re careful with your hashtags you’ll hugely increase your social reach and encourage interaction with your brand. Even better, you’ll see consumers connecting with each other around your brand, using your message.

Amazon is banking on consumers connecting over their brand by teaming up with Twitter to allow consumers to push products directly to their Amazon carts from their Twitter streams, using the hashtag #amazoncart. If #AmazonCart catches on, look for future integrations with Instagram and especially with Pinterest, which is already a giant shopping hub.

Even if you’re not in the same type of business as Amazon, their model is still interesting. It shows that consumers are ready to embrace social posts and hashtags as a last step toward their shopping carts. Can you think of a way to implement that into your marketing efforts?

How to Use #hashtags

Like any marketing strategy, your hashtags need to be focused on your audience, not yourself. Get into the minds and habits of your target consumer to find out how they’ll use your hashtags. Even more importantly, learn how to use hashtags to make it easier for consumers to find and talk about you:

1. Do your research

Don’t just pull a hashtag out of thin air. Use your keyword research skills to identify how your audience and your competition are searching for your brand. Tools like Rite Tag, Twubs, or Kitedesk’s Social CRM can help you find trending and effective hashtags and avoid overused ones.

2. Keep it simple

Use a single word whenever possible, or combine short words that are easy to remember. No spaces, of course. #longcomplicatedhashtags are too easy for your followers to get wrong, and they will only create confusion. Remember that users may be typing on phones while driving or skydiving.

3. Know your community

Hashtags perform differently on different social platforms. You’ll see the biggest increase in engagement on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Google+ hashtags may soon be especially relevant, since Google now supports hashtag searching.

Facebook users haven’t really cared about hashtags, but you can still use them sparingly to cross-market a keyword if Facebook is more popular for your brand than other social platforms. Publicizing your hashtags may be another way for consumers to find you in Google’s results.

How to Abuse #hashtags

You owe it to your brand and your online communities to hashtag wisely. You’re posting to build a community, not embarrass yourself. Avoid these abusive habits:

1. Forgetting the message

Hashtags aren’t enough. You still need to say something in your post or tweet. Integrate your hashtags into your post naturally, or add them to the end. Either way, they need to make sense within your post. This shows respect for your audience and your message.

2. Spamming like a champ

We’ve all seen hashtag spam. It isn’t pretty, and it won’t turn your audience into your advocates.  You never need more than 3 hashtags per post. And usually, you can get away with one or two.

Using too many hashtags pollutes your message. They won’t get read, shared, searched, and your brand will suffer.

3. Forgetting the details

Remember J.P. Morgan’s hijacked hashtag? If your brand isn’t social-friendly, or you’re not ready for your audience to freestyle with your message, hashtags may not be for you. Check to see if your hashtag is already being shared. If so, choose another one. It’s hard to predict what will backfire, but safety first!

Go Forth and #hashtag

Hashtags can help you make the most of possibly the greatest marketing environment we’ve ever seen. Social media converts audiences into consumers into brand advocates, but it doesn’t happen by accident.

Hashtags aren’t magic, and there’s no formula for guaranteed success. Test every strategy until you find the sweet spot of engagement and response. Make your message as social as possible, and give your communities an easy way to interact with your brand.

  This article was written for Business 2 Community by Jay Leonard.
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Author: Jay Leonard

Jay is a UK-based cryptocurrency expert, specialising in fundamental analysis and medium to long term investments. Jay has a great deal of hands-on experience in analysing financial markets and performing technical analysis. Jay is currently focusing on the institutional adoption of cryptocurrency and what it means for the future of

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