8 Tips for Choosing the Right Hashtags for your Hashtag Aggregator Tool
Hashtags! They are either a word or a group of words that follow the # sign. If you are a social media person, you either know them or might have come across them. Interestingly, they started out as a techy way to organize and start conversations and have grown to become the building blocks of social media marketing.
They may also be referred to as hashtag aggregators because they combine social media posts that use a particular social media hashtag.
So, why are hashtags important to use?
While hashtags may seem pointless to a novice, the truth is that they are a powerful tool to help you market your business. This is because they can increase your reach, amplify your brand, and get your content to people who need to see it.
In fact, with hashtags, you have one of the easiest ways of expanding your influence beyond your current audience. By using relevant hashtags, people searching for those keywords can easily find your post and updates and might follow your brand.
For instance, on Twitter (the birthplace of hashtags), 55% of users are more likely to retweet a post especially when there is at least one hashtag.
Now that you know why hashtags are essential, let’s dive in and explore 8 tips that will assist you to choose the right hashtags for your hashtag aggregator.
- Learn from influencers
Influencers play a crucial role when it comes to marketing brands, therefore searching for influencers in your niche might be helpful. Through them, you can quickly identify the most successful hashtags, relevant to your brand and use them.
- Use Twitter’s Tailored Trends
The awesome thing about keeping an eye on Twitter trends is that gives you access to trending topics and a list of popular hashtags based on your interest, followers, and location.
- Use Tools
There are several tools already in the market that can enable you to find and analyze trending hashtags related to particular topics. Tools such as curator.io can help you to find trending hashtags in your niche quickly.
Fortunately, most Hashtag aggregator tools come with free trials. Therefore you can try them out and establish which one works best for you. Should you discover a tool does not suit your business needs, you can always move on to the next one, without incurring any fees.
- Know your Hashtag
Just because a hashtag is popular, it doesn’t mean that it is going to be helpful to you. Sometimes a trending hashtag may not be suitable for your brand image. Therefore before you settle for the hashtag to use; research about it. And understand the conversation behind it.
Such due diligence ensures that whatever hashtag you use is beneficial to your business. Lest you end up supporting inappropriate circumstances or raunchy campaigns that can be harmful to your business.
- Find a Unique Hashtag
Create a unique hashtag. Select a tagline that is catchy, unique and resonates with your target audience.
Nonetheless, because of the plethora of hashtags already out there; it is unlikely that you will create a completely unique hashtag.
All you need to do here is to use hashtag aggregation tools to check various social media platforms extensively to see if a hashtag is widely in use already by another brand or trending for other reasons.
- Have a Clear Hashtag
Besides being unique, it is paramount that the hashtag is clear when it comes to the message it relays. It should match the event or campaign you intend to use it in. Don’t let it be vague or ambiguous. It is also not an avenue of exposing your brand, own your hashtag by association and not by force.
A hashtag that is not very clear on the message its relaying might end up relaying the wrong message. For example, the case of Susan Boyle hashtag, where her PR team decided to use the hashtag #susanalbumparty, read it with a dirty mind and you get the importance of a clear hashtag.
To drive the point home, also check this example: #therapist. A simple hashtag yet may convey a wrong meaning. What the user really meant was “Therapist” but was interpreted by some people as “The Rapist.” Just make sure your audience understands your hashtag without confusion whatsoever.
- Keep-it-Short-and-Simple
Remember the simpler it is, the easier it is to understand and the easier it is to understand the easier it is for people to pick it up. That is why it is advisable if possible to keep your hashtag short and straightforward. Lengthy hashtags tend to be difficult to read. Therefore avoid them as much as possible.
Try to keep your hashtag less than ten characters. Also, consider using one hashtag for each campaign. For your hashtag to pick up momentum quickly, it should not take much of the audience’s time trying to understand it. If it’s difficult to understand, many people will end up skipping it.
- Make the Hashtag Relevant
The primary reason for using hashtags is to grow your audience reach. Therefore, if your hashtag is not relaying information relevant to your brand, you have already lost the race. The hashtag you use should be able to relate to your services and products.
You cannot just use any popular hashtag. If you are not careful, you may end up promoting somebody else just because you were not diligent enough when choosing your hashtag.
Note that, once you are using a hashtag you should never leave it unattended. This is because a hashtag, whether new or old, might easily take a detour and go in the direction you least expected. Thanks to technology, you can use tools such as curator.io to monitor your hashtags.
Also, remember to promote your hashtag in order for it to get the traffic it needs. Put it in your products, mention it in your commercials, and get people to use it in their tweets, Instagram posts, and Facebook’s posts. Get the word out there to as many people as possible and then let it work for you.
Remember, the success of hashtags is unique to each social media channel, be it Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. Therefore you can get better results by customizing your content to suit each channel instead of posting the same content on every network.
Final word
Hashtags play a significant role in marketing your products and services. When used well, they are a powerful tool that can enable you to increase your market reach and boost your brand. So, if you have not been using hashtags, now it’s your turn to start using them. To reap maximum benefits; ensure you also select the best social media wall solution to help you display your content and engage your audience.