Introduction
This article was prompted by a person who commented on one of my earlier posts, when she asked “Just what are Hashtags?” can you write an article please so here it is.
Must confess when I read it did think, now why did I not think of that! It is certainly a subject that has been known to confuse people, not only what are they, but what is the need for them, or indeed their use!
They are now almost essential in helping to drive organic traffic to your website, it should be an important part of your marketing strategy, when using social media.
This brief article will hopefully help in how to create your own and how to use it to the best of your ability, must be honest had a lot of work to do on this researching it, as my knowledge was minimal, not certain that it is much improved now!
In case, you are not aware a hashtag is # plus a keyword, such as #moneymaker.
Create Your Own #Hashtag
In order to create your own hash tag you are going to need to carry out some research. There are numerous sites that will show your hashtag in a number of social media sites. The basic idea is to create hashtags, which are relevant to your site, that are not in use, also ones that are. This is slightly confusing I agree, what is meant is that if no-one has your hashtag, them that will lead all who see it and use it go to your site with no opposition. If the hashtag is in use, it will direct you to all sites that have it, including yours.
A lone hashtag has the readers full attention, whereas a multiple one shares a number of sites with a similar message, this can be both a good and a bad thing.
Go to Hashatit.com input your hashtag and search to see if anyone else is using it.
A few tips when creating your hashtag:
- Keep them short
- Do not put them at the bottom of your content but actually in it.
- To increase the engagement keep the hashtags close to your links.
- Make them interesting #gardening is not as interesting as #gardeningforcash
- The tags must be relevant, do not put them in just to get clicks, it is no use having a hashtag about motor cycles when it is in your blog on gardening. It could also make you very unpopular.
The infographic will hopefully help you to understand the process a little more clearly/
When you have inserted your hashtag(s) test them out
Are Your Hashtags Being Used on The Right Platforms
Most people understand that hashtags are considered to be most useful when they are used on social media platforms, but are not aware that they have differing purposes, depending on which platform they are used on. Whilst hashtags are considered to gain you more posts them they do likes, it is just one of their functions.
There are three popular social media platforms that I am going to look at in a little more detail, these are as follows:
Facebook:
Surprising as it seems hashtags do work on Facebook, however you do need to be careful, as if they are not used correctly, you could find that your reach could be decreased, rather than not using them.
Using hashtags on Twitter is as far as I am concerned very good news, Why! They are searchable, clickable and they will show up in search results should you use them in your biography. But do note that only public account tweets will be shown when search results are used, ranking will depend on their popularity.
A point to remember is that Twitter has a character limit of 140, so use hashtags carefully, and do not overdo them, this will avoid making the tweet look spammy.
As on both Twitter and Facebook, hashtags used on Instagarm are both clickable and searchable. On this platform they are used to group together items containing similar content, which means that anyone who uses a hashtag will trigger engagement of previous posts, thus extending the life of past grams.
Note that public accounts are placed in hashtag tag groups, which means that should your account be private, you cannot gain access to this feature. Unlike Twitter you can use as many hashtags as you like, but as stated before this is not a good idea.
To Sum Up Using Hashtags on Social Media.
No doubt you are surprised at just how much you need to consider when using hashtags on Social Media platforms, the fact is that each platform is unique. If you use them wisely hashtags can be a very useful and powerful tool, enabling you to gain new followers, raising brand awareness and much more.
Using Brand Specific Hashtags
Hashtags are used to make their social media messages more “Brand Specific” or to attract followers to their site, put into English make their brand more popular. Look at the celebrities that have their own hashtags, it even improves their image or brand, making them even more recognizable.
Do Not Be Annoying By Using Too Many Hashtags
It is very important that you do not overuse hashtags. Putting hashtags all over your content or blog is not a good idea, it will break up the content so that your reader can get confused, causing them to lose interest, far better to just have the odd one, but in the right place.
If you are unsure about how many to use, it might be better to use none at all!
The considered maximum is 1/2 on Twitter, 4 on Face Book, no more than 10 on both Instagram and Pinterest.
Using too many hashtags on social media, is known as over hashtagging, which is considered to be a social media crime.
You are supposed to only use two or three short hashtags, or one long one.
Visited a site the other day which had around ten hashtags in just two lines of the content, it put me off I left the site, that is another reason to be careful in your use of hashtags.
Conclusion
This is a very brief insight into the use of hashtags, which I hope that you have found to be of use. As always please leave any comments below, we do appreciate the time that you take in making them
The next article will be “2 – Funnel Building Secrets”
Be Happy, Healthy and Wealthy.
Stuart (aka Edwin)
https://learningandwealth.com
This article is just what I was needing! I knew what hashtags were before reading this but I definitely learned some things. I always use them at the end of my articles and had no idea that I should be inserting them within my post! This could be a game changer for me!
Thank you for your valued comments, so pleased that you feel that this article will help in the future.
Stuart
Oh yes, I never thought about using hashtag to get people to visit ones site. It’s a very good idea in my own opinion honestly. Many people who use those social media platforms search for those hashtag to get feeds. If one can make good use of it, people who search can end up on one’s page and then straight to the website. It’s a really good discourse here. You have added how to seeing pwopleare using a chosen hashtag, I didn’t know about that before. It’s a good idea here and I’ll be sure to explore it. Thanks.
So many thanks for your valued comments, glad to be able to help.
Stuart
Thanks for putting this educating post together on hash tags. It is one of the topics that ought to have been treated but has never been given attention. A lot of people take ash tags unseriously and believe it to be a normal trend used in posting uploads on social media without knowing their real and actual importance. I have really learnt a lot from this review on how to create a relevant hash tag successfully and this would be really helpful to me. Thanks for this value adding review.
Hi Willy, so pleased that you found this article to be of interest, many thanks for commenting.
Stuart
Wow, thanks for such educational post. I nut admit I have come across sonny hashtags but i dot often pay attention to what it is about or even know what it is used for. I am glad to he com across such post which have increased my knowledge of it, how it should b used and where it can be used. Thanks for sharing.
Chloe, many thanks for your comments which are much appreciated, glad you found the article to be of use.
Stuart
A really nice post this is. My son would often rush to me asking questions about what an hash tag is used for and i have always been blank about what it is and how it should be use. I am quite sure most people don’t know what it is. That is why I must commend the importance of such educating post. I look forward to seeing more of such post.
Dane, many thank for this always try to write articles which are requested as this one was, pleased that you enjoyed it.
Great and informative article about hashtags, thorough but simple enough description on it and easily approachable I would say. I agree with you about hashtags on facebook, I would say you need to consider whether its good or not to use them there. And yeah, it is very annoying when some publishers and people use way too many hashtags in one post, message or article, it starts to be quite messy and may not attract people, more likely makes articles and posts harder approachable
Hi Jesse,
So pleased that you enjoyed the article, thank you for commenting. Agree that too many gets very annoying.
Stuart
Hi, Edwin and thanks for taking on this challenging topic. There are a lot of tips here that I think everyone needs to know and, for sure, it’s going to help me understand how to use #hashtags better.
This is worth re-reading at least two more times and would be a great training idea inside WA as well. We all need to know these things.
Good job on this one for sure, great advice,
Wayne
Hi Wayne,
Many thanks for your comments, which are appreciated, will give the training idea some thought, it is a great suggestion.
Stuart