Growing your social media following organically has never been harder than it is today. There is still an opportunity for you to get some genuine followers using hash-tag marketing so make sure you get on those platforms, tweet, posting and hash tagging.
What is the Hash Tag
The hash tag, a symbol they’ll talk about for years to come allow people to segment and organise the internet. After a tweet, story or update people can use the hash tag like keyword meta to allow people to search for topics and interest. Its implemented by simply adding #topic or #keyword to the end of your update
Theres very little else to it but the idea has driven how people find things on social media which is why marketers have become obsessed with them.
While you can search for hash tags on any platform the following platforms have hash tags built into their algorithms and development
- Google+
- Tumblr
Hash Tag Tools
A simple google search will help you find loads of different tools to help with your hashtag research but three I find particularly useful are
https://hashtagify.me/hashtag/tbt & https://keywordtool.io
Both tools are great for getting ideas for additional hashtags as well as showing the popularity trend or number of tweets / posts per hashtags showing you what competition is out there. You obviously want low competition but a high number of people searching for that hashtag.
Rite Tag pretty much has everything you need, it has competition in terms of how many posts are being published with that hashtag per hour as well as the number of people viewing that hashtag per hour. This allows you to determine the best hashtags to use for any given post.
The great thing about rite tag is their chrome extension, it allows you to scan any post or article and find suitable hashtags, then you can select the hashtags you want to use and work out if its going to be worth your time competing for viewers
Social sprout is another tool worth investing in if you are taking your social media seriously, it will have all this information plus more
Using Hashtags To your Advantage
So now you have all your data, but what should you do with your hashtags next
- Select hashtags that will help you get in front of your audience, it doesn’t matter how many you use, the more the better. There are plenty of studies out there that will debate how many you should use but none are scientific as its almost impossible to have a control hashtag. Some say 5, some say 11 but in or experience the more you use the better. Maybe add “…..” after 4 or 5 so that it hides most of the hashtags so you don’t look spammy
- Use trending hashtags on twitter to allow you to reach wide audiences.
- Find hashtags your audience are regularly searching for and use those throughout your posts, have 5 core hashtags that will get you in front of your specific target audience and perhaps add another 5 or so that will expand your reach.
- Change you hashtags regularly and test which ones work for you. Have a bank of hashtags relating to your posts and audiences that you can mix each time.
- Don’t ever automated hashtags – you’ll get banned
Much like blogging or general social media the more content you publish the greater the return (as long as your audience is engaged)