Hashtags are arguably the most overused element in all of social media. The average person will use random hashtags that sound good, are funny, and sometimes not relevant at all. As a small business owner, though, it’s important to understand how valuable hashtags can be as part of your social media strategy. Using the right ones can boost brand awareness and bring more customers and sales to you. But overusing them can have the opposite effect. Here are some benefits and strategies to consider when using hashtags in your social media content.

Benefits Of Using Hashtags In Social Media Marketing

The use of hashtags has evolved since the beginning of social media. They have now become an important tool for business owners regardless of the social media platform they prefer. When you use hashtags effectively, you could experience the following benefits:

• Increase in social media followers
• Boost in social media content engagements
• Heightened brand awareness
• Generate new customers and sales

If you’re seeking these types of benefits as a business owner, then it’s worth the time and effort to put together solid hashtag strategies.

Strategies For Using Appropriate Hashtags

Research is vital to ensure you’re using the appropriate hashtags in your social media content. When researching hashtags, look not only at which ones are the most popular now but also which ones your target customer base is using. These should be used along with the creative hashtag you came up with for your specific social media marketing campaign, as well as your company’s hashtag.

Your brand name should be used as a hashtag in every social media post you create. The reason is because it helps provide a connection with your audience, and so there’s consistency among all of your posts. You never know which post will get the most shares and engagements, so you want your hashtag to be present if a new audience sees it. 

Evaluate And Adjust Hashtag Usage

The research you do for hashtag usage is just one component of your social media strategy. You also have to constantly measure, evaluate, and adjust the hashtags you use to keep your social media presence relevant. When evaluating your hashtags, consider looking at:

• The shares, comments, and likes they have generated
• The number of mentions 
• The customer sentiment
• How far your social media reach was

Measuring hashtag performance gives you insight into how well your social media marketing campaign worked. Sometimes the most creative hashtags don’t perform as well as expected, so at that point, it’s time to adjust and use the data you collected to develop more relevant ones.

Blazing Social is all about using hashtags and generating new leads and business from them. Using hashtags is one of the most important elements of the social media strategy we help business owners put together. We can help you develop hashtags, promote them, measure them, and stay on top of the trendy topics in your industry. The one takeaway every business owner should have is hashtags can be extremely valuable when used correctly, so contact us today to see how we can help fine-tune your strategy.