Best Practices for Using Hashtags in Social Media Marketing

 

Hashtags are one of the most powerful weapons in the social media marketing arsenal.  They enable marketers to substantially increase reach, take advantage of trending topics, participate in discussions, and search for relevant topics.  

Tweets with hashtags receive twice as much engagement, according to Buddy Media. They are 55 percent more likely to be retweeted, according to Dan Zarella.

A new ebook from Act-On offers valuable advice for putting hashtags to good use. These are some of the most important tips and research findings.

• The best hashtags are easy to spell, easy to remember and short. Some experts recommend limiting them to six characters or less. That may not always be realistic. Common words like “#marketing” or “#business” are over six characters. Consider an abbreviated hashtag like #mktg, but don’t sacrifice the right hashtag for a shorter one.

• Spaces, special characters or punctuation will end the hashtag: #Bill’sShop will truncate to #Bill. Tumblr is the exception to the space rule. Most platforms allow underscores.

• Include a blank space before and after the hashtag.

• Incorporating hashtags into the words of your post instead of adding them to the end saves space and makes your posts look more fluent.

• Capitalizing the first letter of multi-word hashtags makes them easier to read.

• Consider context. A tweet can cause a PR crisis if a hashtag is used out of context. Likewise, consider other meanings that the hashtag may have, including in other languages, as your post may gain global exposure.

• Consider the particular network. Hashtags are used differently on different social media networks and have varying degrees of functionality. For instance, LinkedIn doesn’t use hashtags at all.

What to Hashtag

Marketers have several good options for what to use as hashtags. Your brand or tagline as a hashtag can help people find your brand. The hashtag can also tie your tagline and brand more closely together.

Marketers can also hashtag:

• Campaigns,
• events such as conferences and webinars,
• lifestyle hashtags that reflect a cultural characteristic or aspiration, such as #outdoorlife, and
• trending hashtags enjoying a spike in popularity.

How Many Hashtags?

Studies recommend different numbers of hashtags depending on the network. On Instagram, ten or more per image are common. For Twitter, two or three at most is recommended. Experts remain divided over Facebook. Some say they offer benefits; others say they don’t.

Twitter recently reported that its direct response ads without a hashtag or an @ mention experienced 23 percent more clicks, according to Re/code.

While hashtags are pervasive in marketing tweets, they may distract viewers when brands want viewers to take a specific action, said Anne Mercogliano, head of SMB marketing at Twitter.

“If you’re trying to join a conversation, you should absolutely use a hashtag,” she explained. “But for driving for a specific click that you’re looking for off Twitter, the less noise that you put in between [the better].”

Still, marketers should not abandon hashtags, she added.

Bottom Line: Hashtags are a powerful tool for businesses marketing on social media. However, hashtags must be well chosen for the best results. In addition, hashtag use varies greatly depending on the particular social network. Following best practices on hashtags can improve performance. Marketers need to stay current on the constantly changing features of social media networks and evolving user preferences.