Did you know that the hashtag is thirteen years old? The hashtag (originally called the pound sign) didn’t appear online until the late 1990s, but the hashtag we have grown to know and love didn’t make an appearance until 2007. The hashtag has now become a popular way to group conversations or topics together by using the same hashtags. The easy to create hashtags have made searching for specific topics or brands simple. It is for this reason hashtags have become a vital tool in social media marketing.
Here are some reasons why you NEED to use hashtags for social media marketing:
Brand visibility
Brand visibility on social media is vital for your brand to, number one, be noticed and recognised, and, number 2, by discovered by new people. Brand visibility is also one of the main reasons brands utilise hashtags for social media marketing. By using hashtags, you are able to expand your audience and increase brand awareness all in one go. This is because when people search your brand, they will see the brand relevant hashtags your organisation uses. If you have a post that has a specific hashtag, for example, #SocialMedia if someone searches that hashtag, they will be able to find your branded post in the results. This can often result in more followers for your brand’s social pages.
Social media marketing is the process of reaching prospects and customers, and acquiring traffic and visibility through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many others. By utilizing the social aspect of the web, social media marketing is able to connect and interact on a much more personalized and dynamic level than through traditional marketing.
Extend reach
Hashtags, just like search engines, make your brand more visible online, as discussed above. This, in turn, means that your posts can reach a broader audience. It is a good idea for brands to create at least one hashtag that is specific to their brand. The brand-specific hashtags will generally be the brand’s name as well as hashtags that describe what the business does. For example, Digital Cloud’s brand-specific hashtags include #DigitalCloud and #DigitalMarketing. Therefore whenever those hashtags are searched, Digital Cloud’s posts will appear in the results. This means that brands are afforded the opportunity to reach people that aren’t yet their followers through the use of hashtags.
*This is the first blog in the two-part ‘Why hashtags are essential in social media marketing’ blog series. The blog that follows this one will continue to look at why hashtags are essential to use for social media marketing.
