Better Branding with Hashtags

You may hear (or read about) people buzzing about hashtags and how much they use them to brand their products and/or services. Hashtags are a communications tool that can be used with several of the popular social media channels.

Using hashtags effectively to increase your branding efforts

In addition to seeing hashtags on various social media channels, you may also notice them on other people’s websites, in marketing campaigns, in videos, etc. Also, many people love to include them in their tweets. You may have jumped on the bandwagon as well and you may have started to try them out in various ways. The question is, are you using them in the most effective way possible? Do you understand how you can use them even more effectively than you have been using them up to this point? If you use hashtags as effectively as you can, that will mean that you get more and more people to notice what you are offering and that will ultimately lead to increased traffic, and, eventually, increased business. It is to your benefit (and the benefit of your business) to use hashtags in your brand marketing as part of the Twitter element of your marketing strategy. So, how do you go about doing that successfully?

• Identify the appropriate hashtags to use: In order to use the most appropriate hashtags, you first have to choose the most appropriate keywords. Hopefully, you will have a strong sense of which keywords to choose. It may require some time and effort on your part; however, if you do it the right way, it won’t eat into your budget very much (or not at all. The way that you should start to identify the keywords that will work most effectively for your business is by starting from the top and working  your way down to narrower keywords. That means that you should start with broad topics. If you sit down and think for a minute, you can probably come up with several right away and then you can most likely come up with a few more if you think about it a little more. After all, it is your business and nobody knows it better than you do. Another source of inspiration is to check out the hashtags that the people you follow on Twitter use. It doesn’t mean that you should necessarily use the identical hashtags but those hashtags may very well inspire you to come up with hashtags that will serve you well. 

• Find hashtags that relate to specific tags: Once you have used a specific hashtag, relevant tags will be generated as a result. You will notice that some of the tags that will be generated will be more useful than other tags. However, some of those tags will be extremely useful and you will be happy that they are at your disposal. Once you have decided which tags are worthy of making your list of tags, you can test them out on Twitter.

• Exercise quality control: One of the worst things that anyone can do is to present content (any content) that contains errors in it. That means spelling errors as well as other errors. Typos are the worst, at times. Of course, it definitely depends on exactly what the typo is. The obvious tip here is to make sure that you read over your content before you send it anywhere. That is an important rule of thumb that applies in every situation. Read over your stuff!

• Use hashtags that are unique to you and your business: You never, ever want to ride on someone else’s marketing strategy. The problem with connecting with another campaign is that you may not be familiar enough that other business to realize that it may affect your reputation if you are affiliated with it. As is always the case, it is very important to know who your “friends” are.

• Check out your hashtags: Okay, so, now you are at the point where you have identified your list of hashtags. Now, it is time to determine if they are really the right hashtags for you and your business. You can do that by tweeting them to other people. You can also test your graphic images. If they are solid, you will understand that pretty quickly. On the other hand, if they are not working effectively, you will be able to determine that also.

• Gather your analytics: It is very important to track your successes and Google Analytics is a great tool to use (and it is free). Remember to continue using the hashtags that seem to be working the best for you but pay attention to what either isn’t working or what stops working at any point.

Conclusion

Hashtags are an important part of your marketing strategy and learning to use them in the most effective way possible will benefit your business tremendously. Of course, make sure that your hashtags are always unique and genuine. Nobody likes pretentious jargon. Your hashtags should use your brand and campaign words whenever possible. If you follow the advice that was given here, you will learn to use hashtags effectively and they will really work well for you and bring your business to the next level. 

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