Effective Ways to Use Hashtags For Finding Paid Social Media Keywords
20 October, 2023
Social media is a key component for marketers and using the right hashtags can make or break your brand. Therefore, they are a great instrument that allows people to do something more than simply see some information. You can expand your brand’s reach by utilizing relevant hashtags among larger and more focused groups of people. Such use of the right hashtags will let you stretch out your brand to another market to increase awareness of your business online.
In addition, hashtags help bring together people in your followers’ database by giving them a sense of community. And if you are looking for paid social media keywords, hashtags can be a great start line. As you look for social media keywords, here is a way you can leverage on top hashtags. This article aims at providing detailed information on how one can employ hashtags to identify the best paid keywords for their social marketing strategy. Whether you’re planning to hire a digital marketing consultant in India or do it yourself, this guide is for you.
Understanding the Role of Hashtags:
Examples of such social media platforms include Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn among others, where hashtags are a common practice. They aid in sorting of posts thus enabling users to access similar information.
For example, when you search for tweets with hashtag, #DigitalMarketing would show any Tweet involving digital marketing. Let’s understand hashtags from the perspective of finding keywords:
- Hashtags as Keyword Indicators: A hashtag usually stands for a trendy theme, or the main information shared by a certain post. Therefore, they give us information about commonly used keywords and key phrases. This can benefit in revealing keywords that businesses can use on their paid campaigns.
- Discovering Niche Keywords: Surveying and tracking hashtags in relation to your niche will enable you to discover less competitive, longer keywords. Such keywords would not necessarily be with high volume but they result in quality leads.
- Competitor Analysis: Moreover, you can use hashtags to keep an eye on your competition. Check the types of hashtags they use in their posts or ads. Doing this will let you see their focus keywords and thus enable you to improve on yours.
How to Identify Top Hashtags?
Use Social Media Tools:
There are many social media tools that a company can use to determine more popular hashtags. There are tools such as Hashtagify, RiteTag and Keyhole which give comprehensive information on trending hashtags and how they have been trending over a period of time. These tools will help you discover hashtags that are most important for your brand and audience.
Check Out Your Competitors
One way to discover useful hashtags is to notice similar tags which your rivals use. View their posts to check out how they use hashtags and how their audiences react to them. It will guide on what could possibly fit in your brand.
Explore Related Hashtags:
It is also advisable to consider other related hashtags. On Instagram, if you include a hashtag when typing a keyword into a search bar, you will be offered a list of related hashtags in a dropdown menu. Such an approach can help to stumble upon new hashtags that perhaps were never considered.
Consider the Size of the Hashtag:
The effectiveness of a particular hashtag may be partly influenced by its size, which refers to the number of posts that are relevant to it. You should not go for large hashtags that attract way too many posts because chances are high that your post will go unnoticed. However, extremely small hashtags may miss the eye of many people.
Conduct A/B Testing
Another viable technique is A/B testing and this includes posting with varying hashtags in order to identify the most effective ones. This may assist in fine-tuning your hashtag strategy, and figuring out what does and doesn’t work best for your brand.
Using Hashtags as Keywords:
Find paid keywords using hashtags by first identifying those that are more related to your brands and audiences. You can then create ads with your content for social media and use these hashtags as keywords in your advert. This enhances the chances of having your content viewed and seen by people looking out for particular issues or products to do with your brand.
Below is the step-by-step process for using hashtags as keywords in paid social media campaigns:
- Conduct research on applicable hashtags that are associated with your brand or item.
- These can be used as keywords for your social media ads and sponsored posts.
- Track the results from these posts, such as likes, shares or conversions.
- Use such information to improve your hashtag keyword approach and get new possibilities to implement paid promotion.
- Ensure you repeat this process frequently so as to remain aware of new developments that may occur on social media algorithms.
One major advantage of using hashtags as keywords is narrowing down on an audience with interest in related themes or products. It will enable a high level of targeting and help improve engagement and conversions, making ad spending justified.
Using hashtags as keywords is also another strategy that can be useful in searching paid social media keywords irrespective of whether one targets Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more. For instance, with hashtag tracking and analytics as your tools, you can view the performance of your used hashtags, treated as keywords.
Measuring the Success of Hashtags:
Reach
Reach indicates the number of different individuals who have viewed your hashtag. It is one of the key measurements since it helps indicate how far your message spreads out. If your hashtag spreads far and wide, then you will realize that your brand’s visibility was good enough.
Engagement
Engagement indicates the number of uses associated with one’s hashtag. Likes, comments, shares, and mentions are some parts of it. Engagement rate means that your hashtag appeals to people and makes them involved in your stuff. That is, remember that it matters for quality, not quantity in regard to engagement.
Impressions
Here impressions indicate that your users have noted your hashtag for one or even more times. Reach is the number of unique users who have viewed or clicked on your hashtag while impressions is the total exposure your hashtag has achieved.
Hashtag Performance
Hashtag performance involves tracking the overall performance of your hashtag over time. This includes monitoring its trending status, the number of posts used, and overall popularity.
Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment analysis helps you know what exactly people think or feel about the hashtags linked with your company. It means that you need to go through your hashtags, comments and reactions towards positivity, negativity, and neutrality.
Popular hashtag case studies:
#WantAnR8 by Audi:
Audi launched #WantAnR8 on Twitter gave any person who wanted to drive their branded vehicle which was a high end luxury sports car. Through this hashtag, they gave an opportunity to tweet and express a reason as to why they desired driving it. The hashtag got over 10 million impressions and attracted lots of creative entries from fans. Some winners were also permitted to have short drives of this car. A luxury brand should learn ideas that use hashtags in engaging potential customers to enhance their excitement about its products.
#shareacoke by Coca-Cola:
The #shareacoke campaign allowed consumers to take pictures of themselves with cans of Coke stamped with their names. Over half a million tweets were made and there was intense debate about this hashtag in social networks. Personalisation and user generated content is what made this campaign a big win for the brand. The hashtag also got popular among various other countries, indicating that it is quite popular.
Domino’s Pizza’s #LetsDoLunch:
The unique and innovative nature of the #LetsDoLunch campaign helped Dominos in enticing the consumers towards lunchtime. In addition, during lunch time, the organization asked Twitter users to tweet with the hashtag and have the opportunity to enjoy pizza at a discounted price. The brand had a lot of purchase and engagement within an hour using this hashtag.
#OreoHorrorStories by Oreo:
During the Halloween, Oreo’s #OreoHorrorStories campaign persuaded people to narrate their spookiest stories related to Oreo. The hashtag was used in such a spooky and creative way that it attracted many users into tweeting about their own specific stories. The campaign connected with its audience while demonstrating that hashtags are appropriate for seasonal promotions and events. In addition, use of UGC created a connection between the brand and its users as well showing its awareness about today’s pop culture.
#ShareYourEars by Disney:
Disney’s #ShareYourEars as a charitable campaign aimed at supporting “Make A Wish” organization. Disney donated five dollars for each post having the hashtag through the support from the company for its user’s photos in which they posted themselves wearing mickey mouse ears. In addition, it helped more than raising two million dollars and it created involvement and goodwill for the company. In summary, businesses can expand their targeted audience and achieve higher engagement rates with the support of top hashtags and then eventually find paid social media keywords. These campaigns demonstrate that hashtags can indeed attract customers, increase sales, while remaining socially useful.
Since social media keeps changing everyday, companies should remain at par with the latest happenings and use it appropriately on their marketing tactics. Therefore, do not underlook hashtags and use them in a proper manner when creating a social media campaign.