Hashtags and its Importance in Social Media Marketing

Hashtags and its Importance in Social Media Marketing

Today our discussion is about hashtags and its importance in Social Media Marketing. The hashtag is nothing but a kind of label used on social media that helps the users to participate in the conversation or message with a particular theme or content. To create a hashtag, a hash (#) symbol is used in front of a word, acronym, or even phrase without space. Hashtag becomes more popular among social media users as an understanding of hashtag’s usage grew. It is now considered not merely as a collection of characters, but a tool that is used to reach targeted audiences, link like-minded users, and ease the conversation thread in social media. People started searching for everything; therefore, searches take place everywhere. That makes hashtag the most effective way of finding conversation or content related to topics of their interest.

History of Hashtag

In August 2007, Chris Messina is the one who first used the hashtag in his tweet (whereas the term “Hashtag” derives from Stow Boyd’s Twitter post). His intention of using a hashtag is to gather conversations and exchanges. He feels that even common individuals can also influence the direction of the internet by tagging their posts using hashtags.

Hashtags and its Importance in Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Success in Digital marketing relies on the companies’ ability to promote conversations and engagement through its content that needs to be found by the targeted audience. Companies have started using hashtags to create positive online discussions and, thereby, build loyalty and brand recognition. The hashtag is a noteworthy tool to deliver brand messages for businesses’ online marketing. As hashtags have the power to bring in greater attention for a branded campaign, it takes its strong base in the digital marketing. It is vital in online marketing because hashtags are,

• efficient in hitting the targeted market
• the easiest way to identify our audiences
• to convey the right content to the right person, group, or community
• helpful in finding relevant conversations, discussions, topics, groups, companies, audiences, etc.
• the link that connects the like-minded people.

Business gets an opportunity to notify by the massive group that is interested in a particular product or service. Without hashtags, it is not possible to find the relevant group or market easily. It provides great insights into the product, connects your brand with the buyers, and enhances brand loyalty. Social media marketing has taken a tremendous place in promoting business online, and now, hashtags have made it easier.

Social Media and Hashtags

Hashtag gradually gains support from other social media as Twitter did. Every big social network catches the hashtag craze because of its huge adoption rate.

• Twitter: On Twitter, hashtags are primarily used to refer to a particular topic of discussions.
• Facebook: Facebook starts supporting hashtag from 2013 that are mostly tags for categorizing specific discussions among users.
• Instagram and Vine: These social media use the hashtag to complement photo or videos shared to increase its views or shares.
• Google+: Google+ hashtag will include original hashtag and posts with similar keywords or tags.
• Tumblr: Tags in Tumblr have functioned as the hashtag in Facebook does. The symbol will automatically insert and the post’s main content will not get the link.
• Pinterest: Pinterest has also joined the hashtag bandwagon that uses it to search for content and mark.

Common Mistakes to Avoid While Tagging

Sending a post with a hashtag or creating hashtag becomes easier. There are certain unwritten rules and basic etiquette to follow as hashtags have often gone wrong because of certain mistakes.

Following are the common mistakes that need to avoid while creating hashtags:

• Creating long or clever hashtags
• Using more hashtags than words
• Hashtags everything (spamming)
• Hashtag pollution
• Using space, punctuation, or special character between the words
• Too difficult to understand
• Not promoting hashtag properly
• Not researching them thoroughly
• Jumping on the Bandwagon (popular yet sensitive hashtag)
• Added to unrelated tweets (irrelevant to the topic of the Tweet
• Being Redundant

Tools to Track Hashtags

• Keyhole – tracker for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Its dashboard displays the information about the no. of people who posted with the hashtag you tweet, and re-tweets, impressions, and likes your campaign is generating.
• Hashtagify.me – helps to find hashtags and tweets around them and draw out hashtags related to the one you have searched for and find top influences for each hashtag
• Twubs – comes with auto-complete features that give more suggestions on the go as you type. Hashtag acts as directory and registry
• Tagboard – opens with the board that has updates from social media like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, etc.
• Topsy – helps users to predict, quantify, discover, and make decisions using the most effective social analytics products.
• TweetBinder – helps to analyze a Twitter hashtag to find participants engaged in the discussions, the most influential, links that are shared, etc.

Conclusion

Hashtags are categorizing content, identifying themes, and tracking a real-time conversation. It spreads its wings everywhere that make the modern marketing strategy adopt hashtag to get visibility. The hashtag is a new way of getting more visibility to your business in the digital marketing.

Author: Selvan

In a modern era website design and development will be a showcase for business. Internet marketing is a path way for customers to your business. Think Big and Achieve Big!

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