Everything you need to know about #hashtags on Twitter

In your quest for social media knowledge you may have heard the term "hashtag" mentioned a lot! Hashtags are a tagging tool that is used by many of the top social media networks, however in this article we will be focusing on the use of hashtags for Twitter. The basic premise is that you throw # in front of a keyword for example; #socialmediaagency, this tells Twitter that your post is about social media and as a result will allow users to find your tweet by searching for the hashtag.

Why you should be using hashtags

Hashtags are much more than just an indexing tool used by Twitter. Used creatively they can add humour, more information and substance to your businesses tweets. Hashtags are the fabric of Twitter, each hashtag is a link that will take users to other tweets and content that is related to that particular topic.

If you are posting on Twitter without making use of hashtags you are severely limiting the amount of people that will see your tweet and if you are aiming to increase brand awareness impressions are the name of the game.

Where to start

First thing is first, you will need to establish what hashtags you will be using. You can technically hashtag any word you like, however this is not to say that you should. Some words are more popular than others and your goal is to find the keywords that your target audience are searching for. Here at Social 365, something we do with our clients is establish a list of core hashtag and keywords that we will use through-out their social media. These core words will be featured frequently in posts and specifically tweets to increase awareness of the business in those particular keywords.

Start by thinking of words that best describe your business and search for these hashtags on Twitter, ensure that the hashtags are being used for what you are expecting and businesses similar to yourself are coming up. It is also a good idea to take inspiration from the keywords you use on your website for SEO purposes. Your goal here is to pick hashtags that have high search volume from your target audience as well as high levels of interaction on tweets. Once you decided upon your core list of hashtag you can start using these with your businesses tweets.

How many should you use

There is much debate about how many hashtags you should be use. The key thing to bare in mind when trying to use hashtags, is that your tweets must be easy to read. #Tweets #with #too #many #hashtags #canbeverydifficulttoread. It does not matter how good your tweet or content is, if people cannot read your tweet, you will not get any engagement. There is research that suggests engagement drops significantly (17%) on posts with more than 2 hashtags, therefore we suggest sticking to 1 or 2 hashtags per tweet with the priority being placed on creating an easy to read post with natural hashtag placement.

How to find hashtags that are popular near you

In addition to using your core list of hashtags you should try to get involved with the conversion related to your industry in your local area. A get great way to find out what people are talking about is to look at the topics that are currently trending on Twitter. Trending topics are topics that are getting a high number of tweets over a short period of time. Keep an eye on these topics and make use of the topic hashtag if something comes up that you think your business can have an input on.

How to make your hashtags work for you

We have covered why you should be using hashtags, what things you should be hash-tagging and how many hashtags you should be using but how do you actually apply this to your tweets? Again, the most important thing to keep in mind is that your tweets much be easy to read. If you are tweeting a trending hashtag it is best to keep the hashtag at the beginning of your tweet so that the readers know straight away that your tweet is related to the topic in question. Another method we like to use is to incorporate the #hashtag into the sentence itself, this helps reduce the amount of characters used, an important consideration when posting on Twitter. If the hashtag you wish to use does not fit easily in the main body of the tweet, simply add the hashtag to the end of sentence #likethis.

Practise makes perfect

Now you know exactly what hashtags are and how you can use them to get your Tweets in front of your target audience. With some practise you will be able to get creative with how you are using hashtags, adding personality and important links to your tweets.

George Rudge - Social 365