Hashtags – are you using them right?

Are your hashtags longer than your post itself? Do you hashtag #justabouteverything? What if we say you have been doing it wrong all this while?

It’s true that hashtags have started dominating our online and even our offline conversations these days. The massive thing that social media has become today, we are leading a life that is based solely on increasing visibility through tools like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And, when we rely so deeply on these social media tools, it is important to understand how to use hashtags effectively to boost the reach of your content and audience engagement.

A hashtag is not a new technique anymore.Rather, it has become a dominant promotional tool to market your business online and increase awareness about the brand you are dealing with, provided that you use it the right way. If using hashtags isn’t doing you any good, then chances are that you’re making these mistakes:

Your hashtags are too generic

Using common or generic hashtags can prove to be a disadvantage for your business. If you incorporate generic hashtags like #marketing, #media or #fashion, imagine the number of posts which are using similar hashtags every hour. Thus, the chances of your posts making it to the top tend to get reduced,thereby failing to reach your desired audience.

Your hashtags are grammatically incorrect

If you tend to use punctuations or conjunctions in between a hashtag, you need to stop immediately, because what you might be trying to express will fail to even get accounted for as a hashtag. A thorough research on how to create suitable hashtags is a must before you go ahead and use them as tools to market your business.

Your hashtags are not updated

It’s important to stay up to date with current trends and cash in on trending hashtags that will rank your posts better. It’s a good practice to find out what’s trending using the search button on Twitter and Instagram to understand what’s hot, and capitalise on the same. Not staying updated with your list of hashtags decreases the chances of your social media posts getting noticed.

You are emphasising too much on the wrong hashtags

For example, if you constantly use hashtags like #style or #cool when you belong to an industry like FMCG, then your understanding of using hashtags needs a major revamping. Your hashtags need to be more specific and should communicate the true nature of your business so that your audience connects to your brand as soon as they see a relevant hashtag used in a particular post.

Repetitive hashtags

Repetitive hashtags will not help you in anyway but only lead to spamming, and that’s the last thing you would want your marketing strategies to do.

To master the art of using correct hashtags, it is important to have an effective social media strategy in place. Make a list of tags that have helped you garner attention to your posts in the past and use them once in a while. Also, keep track of the latest trending hashtags as they help drive traffic.Once your mission is accomplished, you may remove them.

Try to use the right hashtags in the comments you make on various social media posts. This practice is sure to make your brand reach a wider audience base and ensure greater engagement.