Using Twitter Hashtags For Small Business Marketing

If your business isn’t using Twitter yet, you should consider adding Twitter to your social marketing toolbox. Targeted Twitter efforts could really help your business grow. Like Facebook, Twitter offers great ways to connect with customers and potential customers. (It’s also an excellent market research tool, too.)

Twitter hashtags are invaluable social media tracking tools.

A Twitter hashtag is simply a word or phrase, without spaces, prefixed by a “#”.

You can add to hashtags to your tweets like this: #hashtag. The hashtag makes it easy for conversations to be tracked and found because they can be searched in groups on Twitter’s search function.

If you are trying to reach a specific demographic or want to participate in a specific discussion, conversations, industry or topical chat, on Twitter — they often include hashtags predetermined by discussion or event organizers.

You can be an organizer, starting your own hashtag, or you can simply add a hashtag when you believe something is relevant to a specific topic or existing conversation.

If you are new to Twitter and want to use find a specific topic via hashtags, you can simply search Twitter for the #InsertYourTopicHere and you’ll find all conversations that use that tag.

Here are 5 examples of ways to use a Twitter hashtag:

1. You’re running a contest that is taking place on Twitter and want to track participation. Decide on a hashtag you’ll use and ask your participants to make sure they use it.
2. Your business is participating in an event or conference. The event or conference organizer may have decided on a hashtag to use. Adding the tag about the event to relevant tweets could help you share news about your participation as well as help you connect with others who are participating.
3. You’re hosting a live webinar and want to encourage Live Tweets. Tweeting during the webinar can increase the interactivity of the event as well as attract others to the discussion.
4. You host or take part in a regular Twitter Chat. Different industries, interests, organizations, and regions will host regular Twitter Chats. Using a consistent #hashtag for a Twitter Chat allows every participant to see the entire conversation in real time.
5. You want to promote your product or service. A hashtag is a great way to promote a product or service in your Tweets and an equally great way for you to search for Twitter chatter about your company.

Pinterest and Instagram Use Hashtags, Too

Just like a hashtag will help you track and be tracked on Twitter, the same goes for popular sites Pinterest and Instagram, too. Tagging photos with relevant keywords and hashtags is important because search engines cannot read the content of a photo.

Hashtagging photos will help the right people find your images and posts and ultimately drive more traffic to your blog, website, or other digital media assets.

If you tag photos catered to your industry it could help you develop a profitable following. And because these sites have viral potential your creativity and ingenuity could result in people posting what you’ve posted — which brings you increased visibility and potential.

Cautions

• Don’t hijack someone else’s hashtag. Some people try to hitch their promotion to someone else’s hashtag. This is not a good idea and won’t get you very far. Hashtag hijacking is considered poor Twitter etiquette. Some try to take advantage of a trending topic, such as a national or global issue and redirect people to their self-promotional links. This can backfire. Yes, you can participate in a discussion using a hashtag, and it can help you make new social media connections, but if you don’t participate in a natural and ethical way you will likely be viewed as a spammer.
• Don’t forget that all of your tweets are visible on your profile. People can see your Twitter stream when deciding whether or not they want to follow you. Many people will look at your most recent Twitter updates to decide whether or not they want to follow you on Twitter.
• Carefully choose your hashtags. Do a search before using a hashtag to make sure it’s not currently being used for another purpose. You don’t want to accidentally hijack someone’s hashtag or even worse, inadvertently associate yourself or business with a negative or inappropriate hashtag.
• Don’t overdo it on the hashtags. If you add them to every single tweet you’ll seem like a spambot. Use them to your advantage but don’t use a hashtag in every single tweet.
• Use hashtags in the right places. Some people also make the mistake of adding hashtags to all of their Facebook updates, too. They’re pretty much useless there, unless you are asking Facebook followers to use a hashtag on Twitter.
• Use hashtags responsibly. Be aware that Twitter could suspend your account if it deems your hashtag use to be abuse of their system.

Adding Twitter to your social marketing efforts could bring your business new followers. This free and effective social marketing tool could help you grow your business and nurture customer relationships.

If you want to share a post or talk about Growth University on Twitter, feel free to use the hashtag #GrowthU