How to Effectively Use Hashtags in Your Digital Marketing Strategy

17 Jan 2021

The hashtag has evolved to represent a variety of things. We all have that friend on Instagram who uses #blessed at least once a week or follows a gym junkie who is forever posting #fitspo on their feed. We’ve probably all been that person who uses a painful amount of hashtags at the end of a post to seem clever while being a little bit #ironic.

Whether you love them or hate them, there’s no denying that hashtags are here to stay. Believe it or not, though, they can be used as part of an effective digital marketing strategy. Instagram posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement than those without. You can use hashtags to categorize your social media posts into topic-specific feeds, which can help you target audiences outside of your existing follower base.

To use the hashtag, one must understand the hashtag. Check out our handy tips on the best ways to incorporate these little symbols into your digital marketing strategy.

Get personal

The best way of tapping into a market is by understanding it. To effectively use a hashtag, you’ll need to do some research on your brand and its followers: know who you’re speaking to and learn what makes your audience tick. It’s a fact that targeted audiences lead to better engagement.

Increase your engagement by honing in on a particular community. Choose hashtags that aren’t too broad, but not too narrow — find a middle ground. For example, #icecream and #doublechocchipcaramelswirl aren’t good options for an organic ice cream brand, but something as simple as #organicicecream is great.

Do your research

There are tools available to help you gain more information about your market. One such tool is Hashtagify, which allows you to conduct research on popular hashtags and determine which ones are relevant to a particular audience. Hashtracking is a similar site. A premium paid tool is called Keyhole, which offers plans for the hashtag and keyword tracking.

Another way of doing some research without using an application or tool is by looking through accounts with a similar brand to yours. Establish which hashtags they’re using, then click through to find out which other brands are doing it too. This is a simple way of finding less popular but highly targeted hashtags that are relevant to your brand’s audience.

Coin a new hashtag!

Another option for hashtagging is starting your own, either for your brand as a whole or for a specific campaign. As a rule of thumb, don’t use your company’s name in your hashtag. Rather, focus on creating a catchy, easy to remember slogan for your brand. A great example of this is Coke’s #ShareaCoke campaign, which also encouraged users to generate content for the brand by creating a post and hashtagging it.

Keep the hashtag as simple as possible since users don’t want to spend time typing out long hashtags. Make sure the spelling is correct and capitalise the first letters of words to make your tag more readable if needed. Don’t fall prey to the disastrous mistakes of Susan Boyle’s PR team years ago, who legitimately started using #susanalbumparty as a promotional hashtag for her new album. Oops.

With these tips in mind, you’re now ready to breathe new life into your marketing strategy using the power of hashtags. #GoodLuck, marketers!