How to Use Hashtags Effectively in Social Media Marketing to Increase Branding and Promotions
Alternative Titles:
How Hashtags Boost Your Branding and Promotional Efforts
How You Can Effectively Use Hashtags for Branding and Promotion
5 Effective Ways Hashtags Can Help You with Branding and Promotion
Meta: Hashtags are effective in helping you spread brand awareness. But how can they help with branding and promoting your products or services? Read on to find out.
Using hashtags can effectively help you expose content you publish to audiences that care about your niche or a topic.
But that’s not all:
They also help you:
- Reach your target audience
- Give context to content
- Increase engagement
- Build a recognizable brand image
- And more!.
But how can you use them to boost your branding and promotional efforts?
Read on to find out:
Effective Hashtag Strategies for Your Branding and Promotion Campaigns
Hashtags are critical for any business looking for success with their social media marketing campaigns. They can give your posts better engagement and greater exposure.
But there is a catch:
Knowing their relevance and how to use them is essential. Use the hashtags incorrectly, and you may never derive any benefits from their use.
So, how do you effectively use hashtags for branding and promotions?
- Use Branded Hashtags
Branded hashtags have your tagline or company name and are unique to your business. They are also often short and memorable.
But it’s not always easy coming up with a cool branded hashtag.
In this case, search for your brand name on social media. You may find that customers already have a hashtag they use for your brand.
Once you find a cool and memorable hashtag, apply it to any of your posts, and use it regularly.
What’s more?
Encourage your followers to use it. They can use it to tell the world how they feel about your brand. When they do that, they speak to their followers and those they tag in your posts.
A branded hashtag helps you build a community around your brand. It’s also a great place to help your target audience learn more about your products and services. Those who use your hashtag can also help draw attention to your products or services.
Pro tip: To encourage users to share your hashtags, run a promotion that offers a prize for the person with the most shares on their post.
Example:
KitKat uses a branded hashtag that features its tagline #HaveABreak on most social media platforms. They have built a community around the hashtag, and their consumers use it to engage with others on the various platforms.
Image viaInstagram
A more in-depth search, and you will find different variations of the hashtag. These include #haveabreakhaveakitkat, #haveabreakhavekitkat, and #haveabreakwithkitkat. Using different variations of your branded hashtag can stick to people’s minds and expand your reach.
- Create Campaign Specific Hashtags
Campaign hashtags run for a duration. Most marketers use them to track conversations around a campaign or track contest entries. You can use your brand name in these hashtags, but you must make sure that the hashtag conveys the campaign message or slogan.
For these hashtags, you will need to usetools that generate hashtags during research. These tools help you make sure that the hashtag is not in use by another brand. They also help you see the different variations of the words you can use and whether they provide unintended meanings.
Example:
#TweetFromTheSeat by Charmin
You may think that toilet paper and wet wipes are boring products. But Charmin had a successful campaign with its #TweetFromTheSeat hashtag.
Most people use social media while on their bathroom breaks, and Charmin sought to make this experience even better. They encouraged customers to share tweets while on the loo, and the response was massive. Charmin also made the campaign more fun by adding humorous posts about the loo experience.
Image viaTwitter
- Use Influencers to Boost Your Hashtag Campaigns
The best influencers are those capturing the attention of your target audience. These are people whose voices consumers in your target audience or niche listen to and trust.
Influencers can help you extend the reach of your hashtag campaigns. They can also give your message credibility and increase engagement with your brand.
But how do you find an influencer for your hashtag campaign?
There are several ways to do this:
The first one is a manual search on social media for influential people who champion your products. You can use hashtags related to your niche to find them or find those working with products in your niche.
The second and more efficient way is throughplatforms that help you find influencers. Most of these platforms have advanced filters that help you find influencers using hashtags, niche topics, audience demographics, etc.
Once you find the right influencer, approach them for collaboration, and kick start your hashtag campaign. Influencers can help you access a huge number of followers and increase your reach. They can also help you build trust with your target audience and boost sales.
Example:
#MyCalvins by Calvin Klein.
Over the years, Calvin Klein has partnered with many influencers and celebrities on their #MyCalvins campaign. Their I Speak My Truth campaign, for example, used influential voices to tell their own stories using their own words. The brand also invited their fans to speak their truth using the #MyCalvins hashtag.
Image viaYouTube
- Call-to-Action (CTA) Hashtags
You can use hashtags to encourage customers to act.
How?
Find a short inclusive CTA that gives your target audience instructions. It should be doable and encourage only actions that the audience can easily join.
The CTA hashtag should also relate to your campaign. It can encourage your audience to participate in a fun activity, contribute to an important cause, or earn a sense of participation. An excellent example of this would be the #TweetFromTheSeat hashtag campaign mentioned above.
Example:
#ShareACoke by Coca-Cola
#ShareACoke was a fun CTA that drew in lots of success for the company. Coca-Cola created cans that encouraged customers to share a coke with their friends. They also encouraged users to share pictures as they had drinks with friends.
Apart from the huge engagement they got, the company got numerous user-generated content and increased their reach.
Image viaInstagram
- Create Content Hashtags
These are hashtags that are relevant and fit well to the content you want to publish.
And the best part?
They do not have to be trending or campaign-specific.
How do they help?
They help your audience find content when they conduct general searches on a specific topic. These hashtags optimize your content for search.
Content hashtags can help your target audience learn about a specific topic, so being on top of their search results can help. Having the hashtags on your Stories can also optimize your content more.
Example:
A hashtag like #TravelPhotography is popular on most social media platforms.
Image viaTwitter
By leveraging the hashtag, a brand can get high engagement rates and drive potential travelers to their website. Pairing the hashtag with the location can also boost the chances of getting a traveler looking to travel to that location.
- Monitor Hashtag Performance
Test, track, experiment, and monitor the effectiveness of your hashtags campaigns. The data you get can help you tweak your strategy to increase engagement and boost reach.
So, how do you track the hashtags?
Most social media platforms offer insights into the performance of each of your posts. However, insights from these platforms may limit how far back you can track performance. Instagram for example, allows you to see metrics for only 14 days for Stories and seven days for your feeds.
For more in-depth insights, use third party social media tools. Tools like Tagboard, Statusbrew, Buffer, etc. can help you manage your social media campaigns on various platforms. You can use them to schedule, publish, and monitor your hashtags posts across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
Once you find a good tool, continually track all the hashtags you use. Take note of those that bring in the most engagement, and attract new followers. Test, and experiment with these hashtags on the various platforms to amplify reach.
Monitor brand mentions to find out what people think about your brand. Doing this can also help you find what phrases customers use with your brand and offer you ideas for your next hashtag campaigns.
The insights you get from tracking and analyzing your hashtag campaigns can help you improve future campaigns. They can help you promote your brand message better and have meaningful conversations with your target audience.
Are You Ready to Amplify Your Hashtag Campaign Strategies?
As you can see from the above examples, using hashtags can help you with branding and promoting your business. You just need to research your hashtags thoroughly, put in a little more effort, and effectively promote and grow your business.
You should also learn from the hashtags you use by continually experimenting and optimizing for better results.
Have you ever tried using any of the hashtag campaign methods mentioned above? Tell us in the comment section below.