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Using Twitter Hashtags 101
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The real home of hashtags was Twitter; it is where the journey of hashtags actually started. However, hashtags are now flooded on every social media channel. Be it Facebook or Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest, hashtags are working as an indispensable tool for marketers.
These hashtags are ideal in picking up the relevant topics from a cascade of posts. Though hashtags have their importance on every social media channel, this article will shed light on Twitter hashtags and their importance. Making your own hashtag is simple.
You just need to use the symbol “#” followed by a word without any space.
For instance, #olympics is a hashtag. These words are usually phrases or keywords. You will use the keyword that is relevant to your business. Anyone can then just type the hashtag of their choice and conveniently find multiple topics related to it.
Thus, you can easily come across the tweets related to your search query. If you are not using your Tweets, ironically there is a way to showcase them to a huge audience, and hashtags can easily do the job for you. Without the use of hashtags, the ground of Twitter is blur and gray.
Twitter Statistics have revealed that tweets having hashtags get 2x more engagement than other tweets. Marketing connoisseurs believe that tweets without hashtags are likely to sink into the sea of tweets without being noticed by anyone.
On the flip side, using too many hashtags can too, make your content worthless.
Marketers use the power of hashtags for reaching their targeted audience. They use the same hashtags that their potential clients are likely to use so that reaching them becomes easier and simpler.
How hashtags are used?
Hashtags are used in multiple ways ranging from how-tos and upcoming events to themes and technology. You can easily insert a hashtag anywhere in your tweet. If the hashtag is related to a trending topic, it will show up in the list of trending topics.
Though anyone can use the hashtags in any of their tweets, keeping a few things in mind can help you in reaping the fruits.
- Although you are free to use as many hashtags as you want, a professional marketer will never use more than two hashtags per tweet.
- Never forget that there shouldn’t be spaces in a hashtag.
- You have to unfollow the rules of grammar for making your hashtags work. Punctuations in hashtags are not advisable. For instance, the hashtag #It’sWorldCup2020 is considered wrong in comparison to #ItsWorldCup2020 which has no punctuation.
- You cannot use special characters in your hashtags. For instance, #White&Black is not a proper hashtag. You should use #WhiteandBlack to make it clickable.
How twitter directs us to content via hashtags?
When you type a word #food on Twitter, you will see the search result based on five categories which are:
- Top
- Latest
- People
- Photos
- Videos
If you go to the Top category, you’ll find posts that have got the highest engagement. In the Latest category, posts are shown in chronological order. Similarly, you will find people with #food in their bio and photos and videos of the same hashtag. Now that you’ve got an idea of what hashtags are and how they can be useful, let’s see in detail how you can find some trending hashtags on Twitter.
The trending hashtags on Twitter
Some marketers keep scratching their heads for finding the best trending hashtags on Twitter while others know the right tools for knowing the latest trends. Every tool comes with some pros and cons but using these tools gives you leverage in identifying the niche, reaching the target audience and engaging with your customers.
Twitter displays a list of the most trending topics under your profile and hashtags are displayed on the left side. The details about each hashtag are displayed under it.
You can easily know the number of times these hashtags are used in tweets by different people. Besides this, you can also get some detailed specifications by going on Twitter.com and filling the requirements. You can make use of these amazing tools for finding the best hashtags within minutes:
it
Commun.it is one of the most sophisticated tools for tracking your Twitter hashtags. Working with this tool enables you to use multiple features like tracking your followers, getting notifications for your mentions and so on.
After signing up, you can easily perform social listening by tracking the hashtags and knowing which other businesses have mentioned you. There is also a community tab that enables you to generate leads besides tracking your hashtags.
This tool allows you to search for keywords, bios, and followers. By typing a single keyword, you can get to know all the hash-tagged results.
Trendsmap
Trendsmap is yet another tool for tracking the most trending topics on Twitter and checking the trendiest hashtags locally. It gives you the convenience of getting all the current information and even future alerts by just typing a keyword, phrase, topic, or hashtag.
Trendsmap offers different plans and you can select the best one as per your needs. You can also customize your research by choosing the right plan. It provides the convenience of knowing both global as well as locally trending topics. The tool makes sure to equip its users about all the trending topics of the Twitter world.
It also has a free version but historical data is not shown in it. The paid version starts from $25 a month. You can see the trending hashtags by either zooming in or opening the navigation bar.
RiteTag
Rite Tag is yet another popular tool for getting your hands on the trendiest Twitter hashtags. It works on real-time engagement and lets you know about the best hashtags for your images besides giving the top suggestions for your text.
The best part about this tool is that you can easily use it on multiple devices. It provides a comprehensive report of the hashtag and mentions all the tweets containing the hashtag which you have searched.
A chrome extension of the tool is ideal for getting an instant suggestion of hashtags. In addition to this, the tool also tells the number of people who have used the same hashtag in their tweets. It costs $49 per year and offers more advanced plans too.
Hashtagify
Hashtagify is regarded as one of the best marketing tools as it uses a hashtag search engine to find out the most appropriate hashtags for you. These hashtags can be used in finding out the competitors, reaching the targeted groups, recognizing the influencers and employing the best marketing tactics.
This tool not only provides the best hashtags but also gives detailed reports about them. You can get a free analysis of your hashtags and an expert opinion about using them in the best manner. Hashtagify guides you about the hashtags based on their attractiveness, competitors, and influencers.
All you need to do is to put your keyword in the search bar and hit the enter button – you will get all the details in seconds.
For instance, if you type the keyword Carpet cleaning London, the tool will tell you about the popularity of this keyword in your region, some related hashtags with this keyword like the #bestcleaningservices, #carpetcleanersLondon, and so on. As far as pricing is concerned, it depends on your customized needs.
Experts also believe that this tool is the right choice for getting real followers on Twitter. It has a free as well as a paid version that starts from $9 a month.
You can use any of the above-mentioned tools to find out the most popular hashtags for your business but it does not mean that you necessarily need to use them in your posts. Once you are done with your research on finding the best hashtags, you need to do your analysis of picking the one that suits your needs. One thing is clear that tweets having hashtags have higher chances of being retweeted. But the question arises – which hashtags help you in reaching your audience?
According to research, highly popular hashtags are used by many businesses and they become very common. If these generic hashtags are used without any thought, chances of reaping the benefits are next to impossible. Thus, one needs to check the relevancy of these popular hashtags with the nature of the business.
If the targeted audience will love to see posts related to the selected hashtags then the hashtag is ideal for you. Checking the hashtags that are particularly popular in your niche and then testing the relevancy is an ideal approach in finding the best hashtags.
Relevancy of Twitter hashtags
Relevancy is not a joke, it is a serious matter and fitting irrelevant hashtags in your tweets just to drive traffic tantamounts to spam. For instance, you have found out that the most trending hashtag is #WorldCup since last week. You have used this hashtag in your business although your business is related to financial consultancy.
The hashtag will surely drive the attention of a huge crowd but there is no use of such attention when you have a completely different target market. Above all, people might complain about your spamming and you can be kicked out of Twitter.
Thus, after going through the first step of finding the trending hashtags, the next essential step is to pass the relevancy test for the selected hashtags.
Things to see in a relevancy test
Check the hashtags with TagDef
If you have found out the most trending hashtag but are unaware of the meaning of it, you will never be able to comprehend its relevance. So, you need to understand the hashtag first before checking its relevance. You can easily do it using TagDef.
All you need to do is to type the hashtag which you want to understand and the results will show multiple definitions of the hashtag. For instance, if you type the word “soccer”, it will tell you the basic definition of soccer.
Check what the influencers are doing
Some people use the same hashtags that are used by the influencers as they consider them as authoritative. However, a thorough check is essential before making a tweet. Now that you have a list of hashtags in hand, you can type each of them in the Twitter search bar.
The Top category that is set by default is likely to show the influencers as they get the most attention and engagement. Thus, you can easily check how many influencers are using that hashtag. If it is used by multiple influencers of your niche, you can use it freely.
While making your own hashtag
Some top-notch brands have made their own hashtags and the results have been commendable. However, one cannot create any hashtag without planning and a campaign. If it’s a new hashtag, how will people know about it? You firstly need to introduce the hashtag and relate it to your brand.
For this, companies spend a hefty amount by creating different campaigns and social media strategies. For instance, Nike created a hashtag #Breaking2 which is campaign-specific.
No one would have understood the hashtag if an entire campaign was not launched about it. The campaign related to this hashtag was about breaking the barrier of 2 hours for completing a marathon. Campaign specific hashtags are easier to create but one should do proper research to see if the hashtag doesn’t already exist.
After this, if the hashtag is unique, the length must be short as long hashtags are hard to remember. Twitter hashtags are not case sensitive, but experts recommend using capital letters so that they become more readable. In short, your tweet will have no value if it does not have a trending hashtag in it.
The trend of using hashtags will keep on rising as Twitter marketing has now become a need in digital marketing. There is a profound impact of Twitter trends and the related hashtags on your marketing strategy. If you have used the right tools for getting the trendiest and relevant hashtags in your tweets, you will be hitting the target market soon.
