By Debbie Gregory.
Our last article went over what a hashtag is and why you need to use them when posting on social media. The question that comes next is “how do I find the right hashtags to use in my posts?” To find hashtags that are specific to your company, your brand, your industry and your audience, you will need to do a little research. Below are a few tips that can help you.
1.) Keep an eye on which hashtags are trending on each platform
It is always a good idea to know what hashtags are trending on the platforms you use. Some will be relevant to your company and others will not be relevant. You can keep track of these manually but that can be very time-consuming, especially if you use more than one social platform. Utilizing tools, such as RiteTag, allows you to research what hashtags would be best to pair with your content and saves your valuable time. Basically, you simply type in the caption you plan to use for your post, along with the post image, and RiteTag will generate trending hashtag suggestions based on your content.
2.) Use Hashtagify.me to check hashtag popularity
Hashtagify.me lets you search any hashtag and gives you a quick picture of how popular it is. Hashtagify.me shows you the hashtag’s overall popularity, its recent popularity, and its trends are broken down by both month and week.
3.) Look at the success of hashtags on your past posts
Keeping track of hashtags, you have used on past posts and analyzing their success will provide you a good idea of hashtags to include in future posts. It is also makes sense for you to type the successful hashtags into the other tools listed in this article in order to check their overall popularity. Make a point to re-use hashtags that have been helpful to your posts.
4.). Keep an eye on relevant social media influencers as well as your competitors
To be successful in any industry, you need to know who your business’ influencers and competitors are. You have a target audience in common and need to connect with those people in similar ways. Once you know who your influencers and competitors are, make a note of what hashtags they use the most in their posts. This information will help you better engage your shared audiences and potentially grow your influence in your market.
5.) Utilize social media management tools
There are quite a few platforms out there that will allow you to do your hashtag research directly from the platform as well as pre-schedule all of your social posts. These types of social media management platforms usually have built in analytics and other helpful insight tools. One of the more popular ones today is HootSuite.
Hootsuite allows you to search social streams and discover which hashtags are the best to use for each of the different platforms. All you need to do is setup an account, attach your social networks, and search streams. It is easy to see from the streams which hashtags are the most popular and the most effective for your chosen social platform.
6.) Find and use related hashtags
Once you have a good handle on what hashtags work best for your specific business, you may wish to consider using popular related hashtags on your posts too. These types of hastags are usually more specific than the ones you have already been using. Additionally, they can help you connect with a more targeted audience.
Figuring out which hashtags would be best for your posts, your industry, or your audience does require a bit of work. Keep in mind that this work will pay off in better customer engagement, increased followers, and wider brand recognition.
VAMBOA hopes that this article is of value to you. Please feel free to let us know.
