Know How Hashtags Can Improve Social Media Reach in 2024

The power social media holds today can just not be explained in words. It is no longer just a platform for sharing one’s life updates or experiences. Social media has now become a crucial part of marketing and promotional strategies. More than 60% of people in the world actively use social media. This number itself shows the potential of social media platforms in expanding the market reach of brands. But you can make the best use of social media only if you are aware of the right strategies for social media marketing.

Using the right hashtags is one of such strategies. Hashtag was first invented and used by  Chris Messina on Twitter (now X) back in 2007. Since then, it has become an important part of every social media platform. Let us understand all about hashtagging in this article and find out the role of hashtags in social media marketing:

What is a Hashtag and Why Should You Use It?

A hashtag or a “#” symbol is used to divide social media content into different categories. It creates a clickable link that redirects you to every post containing a particular hashtag. Hashtags work as powerful tools to increase the visibility of content on social media. By using popular hashtags, you can make your post appear among the most trending content pages. 

To improve your online visibility, it is important to use relevant and trending hashtags in your social media posts. The following are some significant reasons why you should use hashtags:

• Higher Visibility: As mentioned earlier, the most important benefit of using hashtags is that they help enhance the visibility of your social media posts. You can use simple hashtags that are relevant to your industry and help people interested in those topics find your content. 

• Appear on The Top for Trending Topics: You can use social media tools to find the most trending hashtags in your industry and create content around them. This will help you appear among the top posts for a trending topic. 

• Connect with Your Target Audience: The right and relevant hashtags help you connect with your target audience. As people who are interested in a particular topic will find related content through relevant hashtags, you can improve the chances of your target audience discovering your content.

Using Hashtags to Improve Strategies for Social Media Marketing

You may think it’s just a hashtag that can add to your post and get done. But to make hashtags work properly, you need to have a proper understanding of how to find the right hashtags and how to use them correctly. Here are a few tips that will help you:

Understanding The Qualities of an Effective Hashtag

To make your social media strategy work, it is very important to know which hashtags to use and which not. An effective hashtag has the following qualities and you must ensure that you consider each of them:

• Alive: The hashtag should be alive, i.e. it should be still in use. Just looking for a popular hashtag is not enough. You also need to ensure that people are still tagging content to it. A hashtag that has millions of old posts tagged to it but no recent posts, won’t be considered alive.

• Relevant: The hashtag should be relevant to your topic and industry. You can just add a beauty-related hashtag to your post when your social media post is all about travel. Doing so will make your posts look spammy and the audience may start avoiding your content. Relevance is the key to using hashtags.

• Diverse: The hashtags you use should be popular enough to make people discover you, but not too popular that your content gets lost. Therefore, diversifying the hashtags may be helpful. You can use different relevant hashtags so that even if one doesn’t work, the others do.

• Reachable: The most popular hashtags and generally dominated by accounts having maximum followers. To make your content reachable, make sure that you use hashtags that have similar popularity as your page.

Finding the Right Hashtags

Once you understand what ideal hashtags look like, you can start looking for the right hashtags. Some of the effective ways of finding the right hashtags are listed below:

• Social Media Listening Tools: You can use social media listening tools to understand the conversations made by your target audience and get insights into their interests. This will help you identify the topics your target audience is interested in and create content around the same.

• Look at Your Own Profile: Sometimes you can find a solution within your own previous posts. You can analyze your previous social media posts to find out which topics worked the best for you. You can also consider finding hashtags around these topics and creating more content related to them.

• Understand Your Competitor’s Strategy: It is also important to understand the strategy of your competitors and identify what hashtags they are using. It is also a great way to find the most relevant hashtags for your brand or your social media page.

• Search for Trending Hashtags: Every social media platform itself allows you to find the most trending hashtags in a particular industry. 

Using Hashtags Effectively on Different Social Media Platforms

In the early days of hashtagging, hashtags were majorly used only on X, previously known as Twitter. But, the scenario has changed now. Hashtags are now used in almost every social media platform. Here are some tips to consider when using hashtags on different social media platforms:

1. Instagram

Keep the following things in mind when using hashtags on Instagram:

• Add reel hashtags to make your target audience discover your reels.

• Include relevant hashtags in your bio and captions.

• Using hashtags in comments is also a good idea to engage with your audience.

• Search for relevant hashtags using the ‘tags’ tab under the ‘Explore’ section.

• Use Instagram Insights to track the performance of your hashtags.

2. Facebook

Keep the following things in mind when using hashtags on Facebook:

• Use relevant hashtags to properly organize topics within a Facebook group.

• Use hashtags in your post captions.

• Find popular posts under a relevant hashtag using the search bar.

• You can use the URL ‘facebook.com/hashtag/xyz,’ where xyz is the keyword you are using in your hashtags. This will help you track the performance of your hashtags.

3. X or Twitter

Keep the following things in mind when using hashtags on X:

• You can use a hashtag anywhere in your post.

• The placement of hashtags implies different purposes on X. A hashtag at the start is to put emphasis, in the middle to highlight a topic, and at the end to add context to your post.

• The trending hashtags can be found on the right side of the page.

• Keep in mind the character limit when using hashtags in a Twitter post.

Mistakes to Avoid

Now that you have understood everything about how to find the right hashtags and use them correctly, you should also be aware of some common mistakes that you must avoid:

• Don’t overwhelm your posts with hashtags. Using too many hashtags can make your post look spammy.

• Avoid using irrelevant or unrelated hashtags in your social media posts as it affects the credibility and engagement of your account negatively.

• Do not ignore analytics. Make sure that you use social media analytics to track the performance of hashtags you are using.

• Don’t overlook the importance of creating a distinct brand hashtag.

Tips to Make The Best Use of Trending Hashtags

The following tips might help you maximize the benefits of hashtags on your social media accounts:

• Keep your social media content updated with the latest trending topics in your industry.

• You need to act quickly in order to maximize the impact of a time-sensitive hashtag. As soon as you get to know about a super-trending hashtag, share content around it to increase your content visibility.

• As mentioned earlier, being relevant to your industry is very important. Make sure that you keep looking for trending hashtags in your industry and post content only around that.

Final Thoughts

To make your social media content visible and more discoverable, you need to excel in the art of using hashtags. You just need to keep in mind that you use the right and relevant hashtags that are still being tagged. Using relevant hashtags can make your content reach the right audience while adding irrelevant hashtags can make it look spammy. Therefore, it is essential to keep the hashtags limited and relevant.

To make the most out of hashtags and your social media marketing strategies, you can partner with top SMM service providers like Madhawks. For any further information, contact us today!

FAQs

1. How do you use hashtags properly?

Ans. Hashtags can be used to add context to your social media posts. You can look for trending hashtags in your industry and use them in the caption of your posts.

2. What is the purpose of a hashtag?

Ans. The purpose of a hashtag is to categorize the content available on social media platforms. It creates a clickable link that redirects users to all posts containing a particular hashtag.

3. Is it still good to use hashtags?

Ans. Yes, hashtags still hold the utmost importance in social media marketing. Therefore, it is important to use relevant hashtags in your social media posts.

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