For years many social media savvy marketers have tapped into the power of hashtags to grow their brand, community and even generate leads and sales.
Hashtags are a big part of most social networks - even LinkedIn now leverages hashtags and lets their users search for content on the platform using them. Instagram recently added the ability to add searchable hashtags to Stories, making it easier for more people to find your content.
Are you wondering what the best hashtags to use are, and how they work? If you're not sure how to leverage hashtags to benefit your business, then you've landed on the right blog post and podcast today.
Hashtag, hash brown - they sound somewhat the same. I've even had a few clients confuse the two, just for fun.
Explaining the difference between a hashtag and hash brown is one of my favorite questions to answer. Often times, the people who have the guts to ask are the ones who get it the quickest. Why? Because as I always say, social media is about people. It's about conversation. It's about having a conversation to connect with real people. Social media simply makes it easier to do such.
Social media is not rocket science. We believe that most of marketing, business and life really can be simplified and put in a nutshell, in terms that doesn't require a PhD in acronyms to understand.
So, what exactly is a hashtag? How do you use them? How many of them should you use? Which ones should you use? Should you create your own hashtags? How can you leverage them for real business and life benefit?
Take a listen to this episode of the Social Zoom Factor podcast for a succinct definition of a hashtag and how hashtags can help you grow your business using social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Google+, as well as increase brand awareness, help you nurture community and better measure your results and conversations using social media.
I even give you a fun recap of the differences of a hash brown and hashtag, for those of you who like breakfast analogies to solve your social media problems.
Episode Highlights
- Definition of a hashtag
- Why you should use hashtags
- Difference between hashtags and hash browns
- Benefits of using hashtags
- How to leverage hashtags to nurture community
- How to leverage hashtags to do market research
- How to identify top industry hashtags
- How to select your own hashtags
- Short summary of Twitter chats
Resources mentioned:
- Social Profit Factor Training System + Member Community
- Twitter Persona Worksheet
- 15 Things the C-Suite Must do Before Hopping on Twitter (podcast)
- Twitter for Business in a Nutshell (podcast)
- How to Not Be a Twit on Twitter (podcast)
- 12 Business Benefits of Using Twitter (podcast)
- How to Get Your C-Suite on Twitter (podcast)
- Why Personal Branding is Required, Not Optional (podcast)
- Top 5 Twitter Tools to Zoom Your Business (podcast)
How to Subscribe to Social Zoom Factor Podcast
This post originally appeared on Pam Moore's blog.