Trend Your Social Media Marketing Hashtags With These 12 Tips

These tips will get your social media hashtags trending every time.

When taken seriously, social media marketing hashtags can turn any digital marketing campaign into a trending online topic in the blink of an eye.

There are tons of ways to take campaigns from trivial to trendy when you utilize the right hashtags for social media marketing.

Leave the corny tags in the past and take your hashtag game to a whole new level with these best hashtag practices from social media marketing experts.

What are hashtags for social media marketing?

Hashtags are keywords, titles, or phrases related to your content which are preceded by the pound symbol (#) on social media.

For Example:

#socialmedia #socialmediamarketing

When did social media marketing hashtags start?

The use of this online tool began in 2007 when Chris Messina, the founder of the Hashtag, suggested using the pound symbol to group related Tweets together solely on Twitter.

Since then, the use of this tool has spread to every social media platform, becoming an important part of content creation, organization, and marketing for all online users.

Why are hashtags for social media marketing important?

Aside from grouping topics together on digital platforms, tags help your target audiences track content related to their unique interests and needs. To that end, this tool helps to drive user awareness of your brand’s content, inspiring audience engagements that can result in more successful digital marketing campaigns for your online brand.

Given the importance and handyness of social media marketing hashtags, it’s time for you to learn how to use hashtags in social media marketing effectively.

How to use hashtags effectively in social media marketing

Trying to find more platform-specific tools for your social media marketing campaign? Find top tips on the best hashtag practices for these five common platforms:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• TikTok
• LinkedIn

There are tons of trustworthy ways to ideate the best hashtags possible for your social media marketing practice. Take a look at these seven general tips to turn your ideas into trending hashtags today:

1. Simplicity and usability are key
2. Use one to three of them max
3. Don’t copy or repeat them either
4. Practice consistency in your campaign
5. Monitor influencers and competitors
6. Engage your target audience
7. Get a second (even a third) opinion

Check out these hashtag usage best practices for your brand’s social media today.

1. Simplicity and usability are key

When coming up with name ideas for a brand new hashtag, it’s important to choose only simple keywords or phrases for your upcoming content. Try to combine no more than three or four words to avoid making complex and lengthy titles or phrases.

Usability is also key in maximizing this online tool. Avoid using spaces, punctuations, and symbols, because these will break your tag’s hyperlink and prevent it from working on all your online platforms.

2. Use one to three of them max

Whether you create something new or use existing trending hashtags, try to limit yourself to three tags max on your social media posts.

Why? More often than not, you can only fit up to three short tags on your post’s description before the text gets cut off by the platform’s “read more” button. While you can technically use more than three tags in one post, limiting your use helps you optimize for brevity in your digital marketing.

3. Don’t copy or repeat them either

Unless you’re intentionally using existing trending hashtags for your marketing campaign, do not copy or repeat the unique tag ideas of other businesses online.

Aside from the obvious plagiarism and lack of creativity in this act, copying the best hashtags of other brands will only serve to bolster their brand awareness and engagement – taking away from your own brand’s visibility.

Remember: this tool helps to organize and group content online. By copying another business’ tags, you’re plagiarizing their ideas and boosting the popularity of their tag branding. So try to come up with your own tags that are especially unique to your brand’s identity instead.

4. Practice consistency in your campaign

Organize your campaign’s content properly by practicing consistency in your tag usage. Once you establish a keyword or phrase for your tag, keep it; if you change the words or mess with the capitalization on every post, you’ll confuse your target audience and get in the way of their engagement for your campaign.

5. Monitor influencers and competitors

Though you should avoid copying ideas from competing brands, you can still learn from them by monitoring their practices, in line with your own business niche.

Gather intel from other influencers and business competitors to see what trending hashtags they use. This will tell you exactly what you should do to best engage your common target audiences.

6. Engage your target audience

Now that you have a unique tag idea that attracts audiences to your business, it’s time to make use of this opportunity and directly engage with your potential customers.

Take part in your audience’s conversations online. Make your brand more visible by liking, sharing, and commenting on user-generated content. Now that you know who your potential customers are, you can make your brand more relatable to them by engaging them on your official social media accounts.

7. Get a second (even a third) opinion

Of course, it’s always crucial to get a second or third opinion on your tag ideas before posting anything official online. Just like with any form of content, proofread your tags and ask other people for their opinions on your ideas beforehand.

After all, you wouldn’t want to be unintentionally rude or crass on your hashtag ideas when you’re trying to top the trending lists for your online brand.

Even with all these useful tips and guidelines, you’ll also have to remember that these tags aren’t necessarily cross-platform tools. What works for Twitter, for example, may not necessarily work for LinkedIn, and vice versa.

With that insight in mind, take a look at these last few platform-specific tips for your trending hashtag ideas:

• Facebook. Given the privacy settings this platform offers to individual users, it can be harder to track audience engagements on Facebook tags than on other social media platforms. If you want to monitor your brand’s unique tags here, you can use the app’s search bar to see how people are engaging with your Facebook marketing campaign.
• Instagram. One unique thing about Instagram marketing is that you can get away with using five to ten tags on your business’ posts, rather than the usual one to three limit. Use this tip wisely by picking tags that are relevant to your campaign and visible to your potential customers.
• Twitter. For this app, it’s advisable to use only one or two tags in one Tweet so that you can fit your text into Twitter’s 280-character limit. However, if you really need to use more space for your tags, then use Twitter’s Reply or Quote Tweet functions to attach more content to your existing business Tweets.
• TikTok. Surface on this app’s For You Page by maximizing the use of trending hashtags in your video captions. These tags help TikTok’s algorithm target your content towards audiences and potential TikTok customers who’d be highly interested in your content, products, and services.
• LinkedIn. Since this specific app is focused on businesses and professional networks, keep your tags on this platform professional too. Again, what may work for some apps may not work for others – so tailor your tags to the platform of your choice to find more success with your brand’s content.

Key takeaways

Social media marketing hashtags can truly take your digital marketing to new heights when utilized and executed correctly. To ensure your success with this digital tool, take a look at these three key takeaways for your next social media marketing campaign:

• Simplicity and usability are key for this online tool. By practicing brevity and relevance in your keyword-making process, you can create trending hashtags that will be both simple and effective for your upcoming campaigns.
• You can look (but you better not touch). Study influencers and competitors to see how they execute their hashtag-making strategies. However, do not copy or plagiarize their work, because that will only serve to hurt you in the long run.
• The best hashtags serve as stepping stones towards audience engagement. This digital tool helps to organize and group your content in a way that potential customers can engage in with ease. Once you’ve established an effective tag, take it as an opportunity to convert your audiences into actual customers for your brand.

Want more #advice on this significant social media tool? Drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to learn more about social media marketing hashtags today.

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