Top 9 Hashtag Strategies: To Boost your Online Marketing Campaign

Identity-Crisis would be the most appropriate words to express the feeling of a hashtag (#), if it had possessed the ability-to-feel!

Yes! Life for this modest metadata-tag would have been pretty confusing!

Most of the time, Hashtag (#) is mistaken for either a pound sign or a number sign. It even possesses an eerie similarity to the sharp musical note as well as an ancient Asian Symbol which describes an early land distribution system.

Sometimes even the content-marketers are pretty confused too! They know they need to utilize them, but they are not sure about the finest approach. As an essential element of social along with content marketing-dais such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ and Tumblr, hashtags signify vital ways of digital communication and marketing.

“Brands will have the opportunity to not only listen, but become meaningful participants in consumer’s conversations” – Anonymous

What’s a hashtag-campaign?

Any individual or a company selects a specific hashtag (very unique one) and requests followers to Tweet as well as post snaps using those hashtags. Such campaigns usually encourage mutual-relationships among company and customer. Company offers various giveaways, discounts as well as an opportunity to the client to notice his/her own post on the website of the company.

And as a return-favor, the client has the motivation to boldly energize the company’s exposure. And it’s a win-win situation for all!

Now is it that simple? Nope, it’s not as simple as it sounds!

The article talks about the top 9 hashtag strategies that will certainly help you to boost your online marketing campaigns:

1). Make Your Own Hashtag:    

Both big as well as small brands prefer to make their own hashtags for various reasons. Hashtags are a huge way to create-a-buzz around any marketing campaign. For instance, #letsdolunch was a campaign launched by Domino’s Pizza to encourage followers-to-tweet and once the tweets crossed 86,000 score, Domino’s dropped the rates by lower than half, that day between 11 am to 3 pm.

Events offer best opportunities to create discussions around hashtags. Honor-your- event with a classic hashtag way prior to the actual event-date. This way you’d be able to get necessary content as well as discussion regarding your event way before its commencement.

Be creative! Utilize hashtags for Twitter-Chats. Request a business-expert to respond to tweeted queries put by your followers. Using hashtags, you can even start a Twitter-game. It’s a smart way to engage people with your brand.

2). Hunt for business-specific discussions:

Connect to hashtags such as #smallbiz or #SMB and access resources, advice as well as up-to-date news about your surrounding businesses. Then tune-in more often for an instant update.

In case you wish for a more precise discussion, then search hashtags by topic. For instance, the #sales hashtag comes with tons of small sales-related content. Or head to the #entrepreneurs or #startups hashtag to access the motivating profiles.

And in case you wish for tips to meet compatible entrepreneurs, opt for the #networking hashtag, to access information as well as advice on how to make connections.

3). Simple and Consistent hashtags:

When creating hashtags, it’s vital to keep in mind a couple of thumb rules:

• 1^st your tags should be straight and simple. Do not craft a complex and long hashtag. Complicated hashtags are not that search-friendly or commonly used, so as a result your tweet will disappear quickly.
• 2^nd do not attach your tweets with excessive and unnecessary hashtags. Reserve it to at-most 2 hashtags per single tweet. More than that would read like distressed marketing and would surely lose followers speedily. 

4). Use hashtag to systematize social-dashboards:

Among the most fitting ways to remain on pinnacle of the relevant hashtags is to assign easily available columns in your social-dashboard. So whether you use TweetDeck or HootSuite, you can set up columns via search-term, social-network, hashtag or Twitter-list.

5). Use Capital Letters whenever necessary:

Take lesson from Susan Boyle’s case (#susanalbumparty case). Though it’s quite annoying sometimes to hold the shift-key down while you type, however, instead of “#NowThatcherIsDead”, “Now_Thatcher_Is_Dead” would certainly have cleared-up the confusion.

And although hashtags are not case-sensitive, however, that doesn’t mean that the message shouldn’t be clear to the followers.

6). Queries with very specific replies:

Please don’t repeat the #McDStories blunder! Don’t ever ask any way-too-open-ended hashtag-themed query and if you do – then be prepared to receive a sea of obscene-replies. When you’re creating your tag, first enquire yourself – how a layman would respond to you particular theme!

Just rephrase out a distinct theme, in case you think your initial thoughts can probably invite a potent social-media-disaster.

7). Piggybacking on a trend:

One more way of using hashtags effectively is cashing-in on the latest trending theme. Instead of providing your users an easier way to navigate such as with cataloging, this tactic is exclusively planned to augment traffic as well as attention to your particular social-media-profile.

Twitter exhibits ‘trending’ hashtags as the most followed hashtags presently being discussed. And in case you wish to hop on the worldwide-discussion then you need to post something significant and relevant along with that ‘trending’ hashtag. Surely, you will grab some social user’s attention that are seeking for information and updates on the ‘trending’ theme and in case they find your post appropriate, your existing followers will perceive you as up-to-date as well as relevant.

8). Campaign and Brand Hashtags:

Campaign and brand hashtags are the specific tags which one makes for his/her own business. Then they use these to endorse their brand as well as promotions.

Example:

KitKat created a brand-hashtag and used their tagline as #HaveABreak. Now they, time and again, use it on all of their social-sites right from Google+ to Twitter. Their followers are aware about their brand-hashtag and they utilize it to connect to the Social-KitKat-Community.

Tips on how to use campaign and brand specific tags:

• Maintain your brand-hashtag, as unique and consistent as possible and employ it on each of your social-media-sites.
• Create campaign-hashtags to stir more understanding about your marketing and promotional efforts.
• Keep the brand-hashtags comparatively short, so that it’s easy for your consumers to spell and remember it.
• Constantly monitor your campaign and brand hashtags to answer people following them.

9). Content-Hashtags:

Content-hashtags are the tags which you employ in your post-content. These differ from branded tags and aren’t used to identify your brand and promotion. These aren’t even trending or greatly popular. These simply are common hashtags which are relevant to your post-content.

The very purpose of content-hashtags is to perk-up the SEO of your particular posts. These make your updates being viewed by your clients who either are looking for or using the hashtag-keywords.

Tips on how to use content-hashtags:

• Search for content-hashtags by seeking out which tags are being utilized by your competitors, your followers as well as your product-partners.
• Connect with people employing relevant content-hashtags, whether it’s a Facebook ‘Like’, a Twitter ‘retweet’ or an Instagram ‘comment’.
• Never spam your post-content with tons of content-hashtags as this won’t inspire trust in your prospective client and would surely display you as a ‘Sales-guy’.

Although hashtags can’t be considered as a magical-course to generate utmost inbound traffic, however, when appropriately researched as well as executed, these can prove to be a very handy tool of your Social-Media-arsenal. The need is to correctly recognize the diverse applications related to the hashtags, utilize them accurately and persistently monitor by following up your progress as well as regulating your promotional-campaign accordingly.