How to Find and Use Hashtags for Social Media Marketing Across All Networks (Your Ultimate Business Guide)
Hashtags are an important part of social media marketing for businesses. They help reach a more relevant audience, drive more leads, increase conversions, and generate more revenues.
Using relevant hashtags on the most popular social media platforms can boost your brand presence and help you reach more customers.
In this ultimate guide for hashtags, you’ll learn about types of hashtags, and tips on how to find the best hashtags to promote your business services and products using social media marketing.
You’ll also learn the best practices when working with hashtags, mistakes to avoid, and how to use hashtags across different social media profiles.
A hashtag is a combination of the pound sign - also called hash or number sign (#) and a word or a phrase of words without spaces.
Example: #appointmentreminder, #onlineappointmentbooking, #textreminders
Hashtags play multiple roles for businesses targeting different outcomes. The main purpose of hashtags is to organize content around conversations.
The goal is to make it easier for people and businesses to filter through a multitude of content and find posts they’re interested in.
Hashtags help users on social media find information with specific content.
Hashtags on social media benefits business and individual users in the following ways:
Hashtags help categorize topics so users can find related information by following the respective hashtag. Users can easily discover the thoughts from other social media about the topics of interest.
Businesses and individuals can create conversations around a hashtag. Social media users will discover the content when they search for the hashtag. The main advantage is that users will naturally find the content courtesy of the hashtag.
Social media provides a rich aura of potential clients. First, hashtags give you more exposure to users. Potential clients can follow through with your call to action.
Hashtags fall into different categories. You can pick on one or a combination of categories depending on the needs of your business.
Here are the main categories of hashtags used in social media marketing for professionals, business owners, and small and medium-sized enterprise businesses.
Trending hashtags help businesses make their posts visible to people following the current trend. Platforms like Twitter will provide you with a list of current depending on your location.
These hashtags may not relate to your content but they can increase the exposure of your content and you could get potential users interested in your services.
Social media hashtags based on location are used when you are targeting users geographically. Sometimes they are known as regional or geographical hashtags.
Location hashtags enable your business to target your content to people in specific countries, cities, neighborhoods, and places.
If your business is targeting people in your city, you can use a hashtag of your city’s name to place your content before the people living in that city.
Examples of location hashtags: #NewYork #London #Australia
Businesses use branded hashtags when posting information about their businesses, upcoming events, or when running campaigns to create more awareness about their services.
In some social media posts, businesses selling a product of other companies can combine their store names with the names of the product or service brand.
Examples of branded hashtags: #AppointmentReminder #AppointmentReminderApp
Business user industry hashtags when targeting users in their business niche. Businesses in technology can find and use popular hashtags relating to their business niches to reach users interested in that line of services.
Examples of industry hashtags: #TaxProfessionals #MassageTherapists #HealthConsultants
If your business is targeting a specific group of people, use community hashtags. For example, if you’re targeting small businesses, then you can consider using #smallbusinesses as one of the hashtags to share your message with them.
Examples of community hashtags: #TheFitnessClub #LocalTravellers
Descriptive hashtags contain specific information about the content of the post you’re sharing on social media. Your audience can instantly figure out the post content from the hashtag.
Example of descriptive hashtags: #appointmentreminderapp #onlinebookingsoftware #reminderapp
The best hashtags are result-driven. Here are key tips other businesses use to find the best-performing hashtags on social media for their businesses.
Find out the number of people using the hashtags. The best approach to this is to use tools that provide insights into the number of impressions a specific hashtag has.
The more impressions a hashtag has, the higher the chances of you reaching out to your potential target if you use it.
Identifying hashtag users will give you an idea of the people who could be your potential audience. These are the social media users who could be sharing or looking for content like what you’re interested to put up.
Popular hashtags are usually general searches that social media users search. They may not exactly match the content of your post, but they may be related.
Carefully select the list of popular hashtags that you can use with your posts to increase the presence of your content.
Avoid using random hashtags that may appear vague to your user target.
Beyond seeing hashtags, you should also find out how users are interacting with them.
Audience engagement will give you a glimpse of the extent to which the people are interacting with the content so you can pick on the hashtags with maximum engagement.
If you’re using more than one hashtag, check out related hashtags and use them in combination with your main hashtags.
Research and make a fine list of your business rivals. Identify the number of hashtags they use, the quantity for every post, and the level of engagement. Leverage these insights into your business.
Find out the hashtags influencers and experts in your industry use for their posts.
Check on the hashtags featured in the content with the most engagement in comments and social shares and pick the hashtags relevant to your niche.
Use influencer and industry expert hashtags to place your business in the eyes of their audience.
Hashtags can only benefit your business if you choose and apply them correctly. Here are some best practices when working with hashtags:
Always remember a hashtag can only be one word. No spaces, no special characters even if you’re using multiple words.
Use capitalization to distinguish different words within a hashtag.
Instead of #Yourhealthyouchoice, #YourHealthYourChoice is more readable and easier for automated screen readers to read it properly.
Instead of #It’sAGoodDeal (which has a punctuation mark, and the search engines will only recognize #It), use #ItsAGoodDeal.
You may add as many hashtags as social media can allow you. However, users may see you as a spammer. The best option is to include a few relevant hashtags. Remember you’re not targeting the entire world.
Discover creative ways to correctly use hashtags across different social media networks: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Why LinkedIn hashtags: Let users find your content and gain better engagements.
How many LinkedIn hashtags should you use: It’s best to use 2-3 LinkedIn hashtags together with your business or company posts.
Why Facebook Hashtags: The right choice of Facebook hashtags can make your content more visible to your audience. Your services will get more awareness.
How many Facebook hashtags should you use: Use 1-2 most relevant Facebook hashtags to help place your content before your audience.
Why Instagram hashtags: Reach potential customers by maximizing the reach and engagement.
How many Instagram hashtags should you use: Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags to reach its vast audience. Hashtags work very well on Instagram.
According to Buffer, Instagram posts with 11 or more hashtags receive the highest user engagements.
Why Twitter hashtags: Hashtags can increase your audience engagement. They can double your audience reach.
How many Twitter hashtags should you use: Include 1-2 hashtags in your Twitter business posts to achieve better results.
If you get more retweets, your content will reach more people. Twitter posts with hashtags get more retweets.
As you start using the power of hashtags for your business on social media, pay close attention to the tips below to craft winning hashtags.
Make your hashtag easy for your clients to remember. The easy they remember it, the easy for them to identify with your company or business.
A memorable hashtag increases the chances of your users remembering your business or company.
Some businesses use only their brand name as their hashtag and this may not maximize their audience reach. Combine your business name with your business service or with other relevant keywords that will give you more leverage.
Tip: Beyond your business name, consider using your tagline, mission statement, campaign or promotion name when creating hashtags.
Sensible hashtags are easy to understand. Unless it’s directly related to your brand name, a sensible hashtag should make use of common words that audiences encounter in their everyday interactions.
Additionally, when your business hashtag makes sense, it makes it easier for your customers to identify the message you’re purposing to communicate.
As you build your hashtags, stay within the context. Relevant hashtags are specific to the message, product, or service you’re posting on your business social media profiles.
Can your potential audience target understand your hashtags at a glance? Can they remember it? The purpose is to create hashtags that your audience can quickly understand.
Keep your hashtags consistent. This will help your followers quickly find your content. Inconsistent use of hashtags can mix up your audience and they could easily lose track of your content.
Short and simple hashtags are easy to recognize and remember. The shorter and simple your keep your hashtags, the easier it is for your audience to remember and this will work to your business advantage.
The objective of using the same hashtags across all your business profiles is to increase awareness about your products and services. You’ll also achieve uniformity in your content.
Join other professionals, business owners, and small and medium-sized enterprises using hashtags to promote their services and products to the right audience.
Use hashtags to gain more exposure to get more online client appointments booking your services.
Get a direct appointment booking link that you can use with your hashtags as you promote your services online.