Hashtags are undeniably a vital tool on Twitter for expanding your reach and amplifying your brand. With more than 288 million active users and 500 million tweets sent per day, you have the potential to significantly leverage hashtags to boost your brand’s global exposure.
Now, Twitter’s hashtags become even more powerful as Twitter and Google have reached a new agreement to provide Google access to Twitter’s FireHose data stream. Google will now have the ability to index your tweets automatically, instead of having to crawl and index each page. This means your Twitter hashtags are now more critical to your online success than ever before.
The Power of a Hashtag
As Google and Twitter continue to hash out the details of their new agreement, hashtags still remain powerful for diving engagement. In fact, when 1-2 hashtags are used per tweet, a tweet receives as much as 21 percent high engagement. However, choosing the wrong hashtag or using too many will hurt the engagement rate.
Using an irrelevant hashtag is pointless, just like using irrelevant keywords for your content marketing. Not to mention, the saying is true, there can be too much of a good thing. Not only is it annoying, but using 3 or more hashtags per tweet can drop your engagement by 17 percent.To make the most of your hashtags’ performance on Twitter and to increase search results on Google, research to find the most relevant and beneficial tags to build engagement for your brand.
To make the most of your hashtags’ performance on Twitter and to increase search results on Google, research to find the most relevant and beneficial tags to build engagement for your brand.
Choosing the Best Hashtags
When using hashtags, you can’t just choose any phrase because you’ll be gambling with your tweet’s performance. You need to put careful consideration into the words you use as hashtags categorize your tweets for searchability.
As Twitter states, “The hashtag has become one of the most valuable assets in any modern marketing campaign. The brands that create the most effective ones and employ them will reap the benefits of Twitter.“
When creating hashtags, your mission is to develop a unique tag to stand out in your industry to gain more recognition. Twitter streams get crowded and if you choose
a played out hashtag like #marketing or #SocialMedia, your brand wont stand out. For the flare you need to gain recognition, choose one that’s engaging, yet promotes your brand.
In addition, create a hashtag that’s specific and easy to remember to organize what you’re saying. Take the “Dancing with the Stars” hashtag as an example, #DWTS. It’s short, simple, unique, and offers more space in the 140 character limit to allow for more engagement.Finally, your hashtag must be adaptable across multiple social channels, like Facebook and Google+. The cross promotion of the hashtag will give you more exposure and be easier for your followers to remember as they see it more frequently on various social media channels.
Finally, your hashtag must be adaptable across multiple social channels, like Facebook and Google+. The cross promotion of the hashtag will give you more exposure and be easier for your followers to remember as they see it more frequently on various social media channels.
Research Your Hashtags
Do your homework when choosing hashtags to determine whether or not a hashtag is overly used. You’ll find out exactly how people are already using it, which may not be in a good way. The last thing you want to do is tweet an embarrassing or negative hashtag and have to issue an apology like DiGiorno Pizza‘s #WhyIStayed blunder in 2014.
By conducting research, you’ll ensure you’re reaching a wider audience in a positive way while categorizing your brand’s message. Research the best hashtag for the opportunity to describe a purpose to add value to promote your business. By doing so, you’ll expand your reach on a broader spectrum, significantly improving your brand’s visibility. Plus, you have the opportunity to start a trending topic with an awesome hashtag.
Here are some of the top hashtag research tools to help you pick the best tag for your business:
BuzzSumo
Research key influencers to help promote your tweets by discovering great topics related to your business. You’ll find out what’s already working to save time.
SocialMention
View real-time social media analysis to search for the most relevant and top performing hashtags. You’ll view trending topics to find related hashtags to promote your tweets.
Google Keyword Planner
With hashtags acting as keywords on Twitter, you’ll find the best keywords to use while estimating their performance to build your Twitter campaigns.
SEMRush
View more than 106 million keywords to determine the best hashtags to advertise on Twitter. By analyzing trends and competition, you’ll take the guesswork out of your hashtag use.
HashTracking
View real-time insights for hashtag campaigns to determine influencers, searchability, historic data, and sharing. The data is collected and displayed in simple charts and graphs to streamline performance.
WhatTheTrend
Analyze stats and related information to monitor global terms on current trending topics. You’re able to track individual hashtag streams to build engagement.
Hashtags.org
Organize hashtags using Twitter’s API stream to search a hashtag’s definition, related terms, related tweets, and performance statistics. You’re able to study trends to determine the popularity of certain hashtags.
TagDef
TagDef works as a hashtag dictionary and thesaurus, providing you with the exact meaning behind certain hashtags as most are condensed or acronyms. You’ll also view Twitter’s current trending hashtags.
TrendsMap
Research hashtags where they are trending by location, which is especially beneficial for specific location-based businesses and events to target a more direct audience.
TagBoard
After creating a specific hashtag, you’re able to track the hashtag’s performance and display the most popular posts using that tag.
HashTagify.me
Research more than 35,000,000 hashtags for quick research on relevant hashtags. You’re able to connect hashtags to trending topics to draw more correlation for maximum performance.
HashAtlt
Use it as a search engine to discover the best hashtags across social media platforms, including Twitter, to find the most relevant terms to use.
Keyhole
Track hashtags and keywords in real-time to analyze their performance to create more shareable tweets for maximum engagement.
RiteTag
Streamline the process of finding the best tags to use with your content. You’ll discover new tagging phrases to ensure your tweets are found and shared.
Topsy
Analyze endless tweets to gather information pertaining to their conversions, indexing, and ranking trends. You’re able to predict their performance for easier decision making.
Research, Create, and Monitor
Hashtags are an indispensable tool that must be utilized to survive on Twitter and to increase your Google visibility. You don’t want to take your chances of just tweeting some random hashtag or piggyback on other trends. Only choose relevant hashtags with popular keywords to make your tweet entertaining and educational to encourage sharing.
To make a hashtag perform it’s best:
- Don’t use too many. Keep it limited to 1-2 per tweet.
- Only use capital letters when necessary.
- Leverage trending topics.
- Sync your hashtags with specific campaigns.
- Cross promote on social media channels.
- Don’t be afraid to experiment.
Use these tools to research, create, and monitor the performance of your hashtags to build an association of your brand. By doing so, you’ll increase your exposure to build more awareness to your Twitter campaign and company. When combined with a little common sense, you’ll add new value to your tweets to produce better results.
Sources:
“10 Surprising New Twitter Stats to Help You Reach More Followers” BufferApp
“Twitter Reaches Deal to Show Tweets in Google Search Results” Bloomberg
