Hashtags are everywhere on social media and marketers are beginning to learn how to harness their power. Once a way to organize your personal posts for friends, hashtags are now essential in delivering targeted content to the appropriate audience. Even LinkedIn has joined the hashtag party, making them more acceptable in marketing circles. Here we’ve outlined 10 ways to optimize hashtags for social media marketing.

1. Keep It Short

Shorter hashtags are more highly searched and appeal to a wider audience. Long hashtags take up characters and leave little room to be creative. Additionally, long lists of small hashtags should be avoided. One to three per post should do the trick with each one consisting of three or fewer words.

2. Use Keywords

When using a hashtag you’re trying to reach a specific audience that will be interested in your product or share your views. Much like optimizing a blog, you’ll want to utilize keywords in your hashtags. For example, you may tag a blog about social media marketing #SMM #Optimization.

3. Current Events

People search social sites for news and commentary on current events on a continuous basis. Piggybacking onto these hashtags with relevant content can put your posts in front of a targeted and active audience. Be sure the event is appropriate for the type of content you are posting.

4. Industry Conferences

Industry events are filled with potential customers and those specific to your field offer a great opportunity to prospect and connect. Most large events have a specific hashtag they choose for all attendees to use. These are often listed on the event sign up page and can be a great way to draw attention to your brand.

5. Weekly Series

Blog and social media series gather a loyal following and can keep visitors coming back to your website. Utilizing a hashtag will allow new followers to find and read previous posts much easier. Sharing a hashtag with a prospect instead of a single link will give them access to multiple posts on the subject of their interest.

6. Promotions

When offering special promotions or launching a product you can achieve maximum exposure through the use of carefully crafted hashtags. You can use simple ones like #sale or you can go for a more personalized proprietary tag that mentions your brand and product.

7. Holidays

Holidays are big in the hashtag world and there are a variety that you can use to promote your holiday content. In these cases it is best to use multiple or combination hashtags to cut through the noise. For example, instead of simply tagging #Christmas, you can use #ChristmasMarketing or #Christmas, #Marketing.

8. Branding

Your brand name is perhaps your strongest hashtag. When posting content on other people’s posts or pages it doesn’t hurt to let everyone know where you’re from. It is also handy for others within your organization to track your activity throughout social media.

9. Automation

IFTTT has automated some of the processes involved with using hashtags as part of your social media marketing plan. These options include adding all hashtag users to a list and cross-post hashtag messages that can be searched across multiple social platforms.

10. Humor

Everyone knows it is important to include humor in your social media plan and hashtags can help separate the silly from the serious. Additionally, hashtags such as #jokes or #funny are consistently searched and contain some of the most engaged with content on social media.

Founded in 1990, Winn Technology Group is a leading provider of global, multi-channel marketing solutions for the technology industry.   For both direct and channel sales, Winn supports demand creation, account-based marketing, channel management, digital marketing, social media, teleprospecting, lead nurturing, event marketing, database services, and inbound response management. 

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