Hashtags – what are they and how to research the right hashtags
Hashtags are a way to group together posts about a certain topic on social media. For example, if you want to see all the posts about Love Island, you can search for #LoveIsland on Twitter.
Hashtags are an important tool for small business owners who are managing their own social media accounts. By using the right hashtags, you can make sure your content is seen by the right people.
A good hashtag strategy can help you to amplify your reach and be seen by your ideal target audience. There are a few things to keep in mind when using hashtags:
1. Do your research
Before you start using a hashtag, it’s important to do some research. You want to make sure the hashtag is relevant to your business and that it’s being used by other people. A good way to do this research is to simply search for these hashtags on social media and check the quality of the content. Some will be obviously very spammy and best avoided.
2. Think like your audience
You need to think about your audience and what they are interested in. For example, if you are a small business that sells eco-friendly products, then hashtags such as #sustainability or #ecofriendly would be relevant to your audience. From here, you can see what other pages are using alongside these hashtags to promote their content further. While you should never copy directly, it can help to see how other pages group their hashtags.
3. Check how popular it is
On Instagram, you can search for a hashtag and then see how many people are using this particular term. This can give you some idea of how popular the hashtag is and whether it’s worth using.
4. Use a mix of hashtags
When you’re using hashtags, try to use a mix of both popular and niche ones. Popular hashtags will help you to reach a wider audience, while niche hashtags will help you to connect with a smaller group of like-minded people.
5. Follow trends cautiously
Hashtag trends change all the time, so it’s important to keep up-to-date with what’s popular. However, you should be careful about jumping on every trend. Only use trends that are relevant to your business and make sure you’re using them in the right way.
6. Make the most of research tools
There are free and paid hashtag research tools that will help you to tap into your ideal target audience. Some of the more popular ones include Hashtagify, RiteTag and Keyword Tool.
7. Monitor your results
Once you’ve started using hashtags, keep a close eye on what works and what doesn’t. This will allow you to drop any hashtags that aren’t getting results.
If Instagram thinks you are using hashtags in a spammy way, you could be hit with something known as a shadowban. This means your posts will be limited and now shown to people in their feeds or on the discover page. The only way to remove this is to remove your offending comment that includes the spammy hashtag.
