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The Power Of Hashtag In Marketing: Does It Still Work?

Last Modified: June 11, 2019 by Michael Gorman 3 Comments

The content marketing universe is magical indeed – it is open to everyone and everything, so even a small symbol such as hashtag can become immensely popular and fundamental. Today, almost every major platform takes advantage of hashtags for launching, moderating, and controlling online discussions.

You can hardly see a post on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other networks without a few # symbols. It’s a huge trend that inspires a lot of marketers to ask a simple question: Are hashtags really so important and powerful? This is a big issue because everyone seems to use hashtags, but not everyone is able to explain their relevance.

If you are also wondering about the impact of hashtags on modern marketing, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we will explain everything you need to know about hashtags and present their advantages and disadvantages. Let’s take a look!

Hashtags: Definition, Stats, and Platforms

Before we dig deeper into this concept, we want to discuss the background of hashtags and why they are here in the first place.

By definition, a hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorizes the accompanying text (such as a tweet). While the symbol itself has been known for decades already, it has officially become a social media phenomenon in 2007 when Chris Messina published this tweet:

“How do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?”

This is how it all started and turned the # symbol into a pillar of social media marketing. Twitter officially embraced hashtags in 2009 with the ultimate goal to make the content highly targeted, organized, and discoverable.

After that, other relevant networks also decided to adopt hashtags as the means of communication and user engagement. Facebook did it in 2013, while Instagram had it ever since the launch in 2010. Besides that, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, and several other networks use hashtags as well.

Today, hashtags are considered to be more or less irreplaceable:

  • According to the report, 70% of hashtags on Instagram are branded.

  • Instagram posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement than those without.

Pros and Cons of Using Hashtags

If planned and administered properly, hashtag-based campaigns guarantee lots of advantages. But this is not always the case so we need to discuss both the pros and cons of using the # symbol in your marketing activities. Let’s begin with the benefits:

  • Raise awareness: Top-performing brands distinguish themselves using branded hashtags. For instance, Red Bull is known for its #givesyouwings hashtag, while Coca-Cola made a huge success with the #ShareACoke campaign.

  • Increase discoverability: Jake Gardner, of the dissertation writing services, says hashtags are basically SEO components of social media marketing: “They enable users to search and find accounts, campaigns, or content among millions of other posts. As such, hashtags can help you to boost social discoverability.”

  • Cross-promotion: Since almost every relevant network uses hashtags, you can exploit the symbol to cross-promote campaigns on different platforms.

  • Build relationships: This is also an excellent way to launch new stories, build relationships with your audience, and drive customer loyalty long-term.

  • Report from live events: Almost every event has a dedicated hashtag that allows participants and interested audiences to keep in touch and discuss topics on the go.

  • Mark locations: Sometimes it is very important to address local followers. For instance, you can add #NYC to promote content and engage New York-based fans.

These and many other benefits make hashtags very influential in the world of digital marketing, but there are also a few downsides that we should mention. The cons of hashtag marketing include the following:

  • Hard to make a good hashtag: A good hashtag is supposed to be short, simple, unique, and effective. This is, of course, very hard to achieve. Only top-performing marketers can think of a standout hashtag that fulfills all of the requirements mentioned above.

  • It can have a counter effect: If you fail to create a good hashtag, it will probably turn out to be inefficient or even disastrous. This is the biggest problem with hashtags because they can have a huge counter effect. For example, you’ve probably heard of #susanalbumparty, also known as one of the biggest social media fails ever.

How to Come Up with a Quality Hashtag

You’ve seen what makes hashtags so critical to the success of digital marketing campaigns, but now it’s time to learn how to create a quality hashtag for your brand. One thing is for sure here – it mostly depends on your own inspiration and creativity, but we can give you a few essential tips to follow in every situation.

First of all, you should use the right words that perfectly represent you, your brand, products, or campaigns. Make it unique, but avoid acronyms because they are hard to interpret and usually make people confused.

At the same time, you should research your niche and competitors to find industry-specific hashtags. While you do want to design a standout hashtag, you must also exploit evergreen niche solutions that every customer is well aware of.

You can create hashtags single-handedly, but there are many digital tools that can assist you in the process. For instance, a platform like Hashtagify or RiteTag is able to analyze the existing solutions, identify popular hashtags, and give you suggestions on how to create the best hashtag for your campaign.

Once you’re done with hashtag creation, you should carefully select the right options for each post individually. Our advice is to avoid overloading content with hashtags because it is often considered to be a bad and spammy practice. Take Instagram for example: the platform allows you to add up to 30 hashtags, but top-performing brands rarely ever add more than five or six to their posts.

Conclusion

Hashtags represent only a small digital character, but they still make a big impact on contemporary marketing. Marketers all over the world use this symbol to raise awareness and maximize the discoverability of their brands, but the benefits of hashtags go beyond that.

We created this article to explain the power of hashtags in digital marketing, their pros and cons, and how to make a good hashtag for your campaigns. We hope it helps you to understand how hashtags function, but feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions – we would be glad to answer!

Author Bio

Michael Gorman is a digital marketer and a blogger at EduGeeks Club. He is also a part-time content contributor at essay services like Essay Writers Online and RushMyEssay. Michael specializes in social media marketing, but he is no stranger to topics such as self-improvement and personal development. When he is not working, Michael is probably out jogging in the local park. You can feel free to contact Michael on Twitter and Facebook.

Filed Under: Blog

9 Ways to Conduct a Successful Content Marketing Interview

Last Modified: January 16, 2018 by Guest Poster 1 Comment

Content Marketing Interview

Photo courtesy of Freepik

Professional interviewers are the artisans of journalism. They possess the knowledge and skills to lead real-time conversations and obtain valuable information even from the most inaccessible interviewees. They have the power to balance between aggressive questioning and peaceful listening. They have the talent but also a strong work ethic. And most importantly, they prepare thoroughly for each interview.

If you, as a content marketer want to achieve the same level of expertise as these professionals, you have to be ready to invest a lot of time and effort in training. You will also need a good interview strategy and we are here to help you with that.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized

5 Ways to Make Your Content Better Than Your Industry Averages

Last Modified: December 12, 2017 by Guest Poster 4 Comments

Make Your Content Better

Photo courtesy of Iconicbestiary – Freepik

It’s probably accurate to say that over 90% of all businesses in the world uses some sort of content to market their business. It’s been proven time and time again that content marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing to have ever graced the internet.

But, just because every business is doing it, it doesn’t mean that you can’t stand out from the crowd. In fact, it doesn’t matter what your competitors are posting. All that matters is the quality of the content that you’re posting and how your readers respond and engage with you.

With all this mind, today we’re going to explore several ways you can create the best content possible for your business and how you can use this content to get ahead of your competitors.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized

How to Synergize Your Content Marketing and SEO

Last Modified: November 16, 2017 by Guest Poster 1 Comment

Content Marketing and SEO

Photo courtesy of Alekksall – Freepik

In the challenge of getting visitors to your website with the intent of converting them, what is the best route? Do you throw money at well-crafted advertisements? Do you focus on a strong search engine optimization (SEO)? Do you focus on maintaining a blog and pursue a content marketing campaign? Do you craft a social media campaign that uses Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat?

The truth is, there are a variety of tactics that you need to focus on to drive potential customers to your website. But the one you really want to put effort towards is synergizing your content marketing and search engine optimization. 

[Read more…]

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10 Obvious Ways To Increase Your Readership That You Might Not Be Doing

Last Modified: August 15, 2017 by Alexandra Skey 22 Comments

Increase your readership

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Is your blog traffic growing slower than you want, or not at all?

Everyone says you should spend as much time promoting your posts as you do writing them. But sometimes you just don’t have time. So, what else can you do?

Here are 10 obvious ways to increase your readership that you might not be doing.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Blog

The Practical Guide To Creating A Blogging Strategy That Actually Works

Last Modified: August 1, 2017 by Alexandra Skey 40 Comments

 

Blogging isn’t hard, but blogging on a regular basis can be.

This is why it’s critical to create a blogging strategy that works for you.

The Practical Guide To Creating A Blogging Strategy That Actually Works

According to the recent Content Marketing Institute’s survey, 46% of marketers have a documented strategy for managing content as a business asset, and there’s no question about it that you should have one too! Having a blogging strategy saves time, helps you create better content and you’ll feel like you’re not always in a mad dash to publish a post.

While the blogging process is personal and many bloggers have a different approach, we want to share one that’s working for us. It’s a systemized approach to creating content – you break the blogging process into 5 steps and do each step for all your posts together.  

So, here is the practical guide to creating a blogging strategy that actually works.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Everything You Should Know About Email Outreach to Succeed

Last Modified: June 13, 2017 by Guest Poster 2 Comments

email outreach

Photo courtesy of Blossomstar – Freepik

There is no doubt that any marketer will agree with me – Email Outreach is a strategy that has always been in-demand. And the reason why it works great is simple. Thanks to this very strategy you can spread any kind of information personally with the one you want to reach out to.

Easy to say but a bit complicated to achieve.

Why is it so tricky?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized

3 Storytelling Strategies to Inexpensively Improve Your Content Marketing

Last Modified: June 8, 2017 by Guest Poster 5 Comments

Storytelling Strategies

Photo courtesy of Freepik

The whole landscape of marketing is shifting; marketers who succeeded by wielding a large megaphone and blasting potential customers with promotional material (“COME BUY OUR PRODUCT!”) are finding their tactics less and less effective as consumers skip, mute, or otherwise tune out commercials. 

In marketing’s new epoch, businesses create leads and valuable customer relationships by creating and sharing valuable, free content, a technique known (predictably) as “content marketing”. As a marketer or business owner, the trick is no longer about how many times you can stuff your business’s value proposition into a 30-second commercial. Instead, you must naturally catch and keep people’s attention long enough for them to care about who you are and what you’re selling. 

Unfortunately, too many businesses equate “great content marketing” with “I can’t start until I have a massive budget of tens of thousands of dollars to hire graphic designers, videographers, and local marketing agencies”. This is a misconception: low-budget content marketing does not have to mean bad content marketing! Even the smallest of businesses have a chance to wow customers with a marketing strategy that has been around for time immemorial: a compelling story!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Content Marketing Headaches: Dealing With Missed Deadlines and Edits

Last Modified: June 8, 2017 by Amanda Dodge 1 Comment

Photo courtesy of Freepik

Managing a team of writers and designers is a delicate process. While you’re running the business side of a blog or agency, you also have to tap into the human and creative side of content marketing.

Oftentimes these two sides can pull against each other, leaving writers and editors alike to cope with each other’s egos and insecurities.

This is when arguments flare up, deadlines are missed, and both parties are left feeling frustrated or taken advantage of.

Here are two common examples of writer problems that content managers face, and a few steps to solve them in a way that is fair and keeps the peace.

Dealing With Missed Deadlines

Dear Spokal:

I manage a team of 10 freelance writers to help with client work. Most of the time my writers submit great work, but sometimes they miss their deadlines. This puts me in a bind because I have my own deadlines our clients and don’t want the agency to look bad. Even worse, I can’t seem to get my writers to understand the importance of meeting deadlines. What can I do? Help!

Late in Longueuil

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized

The Shoulders of Giants: 11 Great Twitter Profiles to Follow for Content Marketing

Last Modified: April 11, 2017 by Bryan Johnston 4 Comments

Best Twitter Profiles to Follow

Photo courtesy of Kraphix / Freepik

Quick! Name a social media platform. Name another one! And another! Again! Argh!!

Once your heart returns to a normal BPM (that was rather exciting, eh?), consider the four platforms that you shouted in panicked response. You most likely started with Facebook, then probably mentioned Instagram and/or Snapchat and/or Pinterest, and finally…?

There’s an excellent chance that one of your four was Twitter (if you mentioned something other than those ones…I don’t even know who you are anymore). Twitter, the platform everyone loves to dis. Twitter, the one that people claim to not use anymore. Twitter, how the mighty have fallen.

Except nuh-uh.

Twitter: The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

If you follow the social media world at all, or are involved in digital or content marketing in any way, you’ve seen countless articles and posts declaring Twitter either dead, dying, or really, really sick.

It’s growth is anemic. It’s numbers look puny compared to Facebook, and increasingly Instagram and Snapchat.

But Twitter ain’t over the hill just yet. It’s still a (relatively) popular kid:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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