Hashtags are an essential aspect of any successful social media strategy. Designed to categorize and track social media content, a hashtag is a set of words, phrases, or numbers following the # symbol. Hashtags can be injected into your social posts, bios, and comments to most major social networks, including LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, and even YouTube.
When you click on a hashtag, it pulls together all the other social media posts with the same hashtag, generating more content centered around a similar topic. In this sense, a hashtag is like a shortcut to more content that suits your audience’s interests.
Through this primary function, a hashtag can be used to increase engagement in a number of ways:
Participate in Larger Conversations
Hashtags can be used to participate in larger conversations about a trending topic. Let’s say you’re a sporting goods company and you want your posts about the FIFA World Cup to be seen by more people. If you use relevant hashtags like #WorldCup and #FIFAWorldCup and your content is highly relevant to the topic in itself, your posts about the FIFA World Cop will appear in searches and feeds when someone searches or clicks on these hashtags. This is a massive increase in visibility to users who are clearly interested in this topic, and that makes them more likely to engage with your content.
Make Your Brand Easier to Find
Hashtags make your content much easier to find for anyone interested in that particular topic. Think about the kind of words or phrases someone might use to search for products or services like yours on social media.
For example, someone who is interested in a healthy new moisturizer might use hashtags like #skincare and #moisturizer to search for a relevant product. If you use these hashtags in your posts about your company’s latest moisturizer, users who are interested in a product just like yours can discover your brand. On that note, you might also consider using branded hashtags so that people who have already heard of your brand can easily find posts about specific topics.
Distinguish Your Content
Hashtags allow you to distinguish your social media content by specific topics and themes. After all, a successful social media strategy involves content that stands out. Your posts don’t just cover the same topics and themes as your competitors, right?
With hashtags, you can narrow down exactly what makes your content different and make it easier for people to discover your content by pursuing related topics and themes. Your competitors’ content might not be accessible through these hashtags, but yours is. And when people see how unique and tasteful your content is, they’re more likely to engage with it.
To maximize the visibility of each individual social media post, don’t use the same hashtags every time. You want your audience to see that you are putting thought into your content and tailoring your hashtags specifically to each post, so they feel fresh and relevant.
For more advice on how to use hashtags to boost engagement on social media, contact the team at The Found Gen today.