What Are Twitter Hashtags And How To Use Them For Online Business
As a social media user, you have most likely seen a multitude of Twitter posts with the hashtag sign (#).
Unless you are living under a rock, you have heard thousands of people talk about it, and seen millions of Twitter users take advantage of this sign.
Can This Trendy Sign Help Online Marketing Campaigns?
There are benefits that can be obtained from using Twitter hashtags, specifically when used in a strategic fashion.
From increasing user interaction to improving communication to developing brand awareness using hashtags in Twitter social media marketing campaigns can boost your efforts in many different ways.
What Are Twitter Hashtags?
A Twitter hashtag is a phrase or word that is preceded by a # sign.
- It is used to organize tweets under a particular umbrella category or topic.
- People use it before a relevant phrase or keyword (with no space) in their tweets, in order to categorize them, help them show up more easily in Twitter’s search results and to better organize vast amounts of tweet data.
- With a hashtag sign, you are turning any word or phrase into a searchable Twitter link.
Examples of Hashtags Used For Online Marketing Topics
#makemoneyonline
#affiliatemarketing
#startups
#marketing
#workathome
#socialmediamarketing
#webdesign
How Hashtags Benefit Marketers
Adding hashtags in your tweets can be beneficial to you in a variety of ways.
- Tweets with these signs normally get more engagement than posts without them
- They can help improve your reputation and gain more followers on Twitter
- They help your target audience find your relevant information in a faster, more convenient and more efficient manner
- Reach a targeted audience for a higher ROI
- Use hashtags to track conversations, track and follow influential participants in your niche, review hot topics, and pinpoint hot trends
- Increase brand awareness and brand relativity to specific topics, products and/or services
- Hash tagging allows you to effectively launch new campaigns, get feedback from recent offers, spread the word for upcoming events, and introduce new products
- You can create your own brand name hashtag as well that can further develop brand awareness and engagement
- Relevant Leads: With Twitter hashtags, you are encouraging relevant users to join your conversations and tweets. This, in turn, gives you quality targeted leads that are actually interested in buying your products or subscribing to your newsletters
- Get found in SERPS: hashtags get indexed in google search for another valuable opportunity to be found online
- Use them to introduce new products and services
How To Use Hashtags In Online Marketing
Many of today’s renowned global brands have Twitter accounts, and most of them are taking advantage of hashtags to promote specific campaigns and events. In addition, smaller online businesses are using hashtags to increase their following, build their brand, and generate more leads.
Searching For Appropriate Hashtags
Hashtagify.me is an advanced hashtag search engine site where you can find popular hashtags, search for those related to your topics by keyword, review usage patterns, in-depth intelligence and find top influencers.
Choose hashtags relevant to your niche or industry and your brand name to improve your visibility and engage a targeted audience.
Before you implement your own branded Twitter hashtag, it is essential to find out what type of # makes sense for your objectives and brand.
Don’t Spam
As with links, Twitter hashtags, when over used, will appear like spam. As an Internet marketer, you should have a maximum of three hashtags per tweet.
Moreover, avoid hash tagging the same phrase or word twice like this:
#Hercules is an amazing film! Everyone go watch #Hercules, it is simply #redundant.
Analytics And Resources
Talkwalker and Hashtracking are popular and efficient tools that gather Twitter hashtag data like gender distribution, demographics, reach, as well as, sentiment analysis on a variety of hashtags.
These analytic tools can come in handy, for analyzing the results of your Twitter hashtag efforts.
Bottom Line
Using hashtags in your Twitter campaigns is essential for many reasons; take advantage of this technique as it that can propel your social media marketing efforts forward.
It’s #elementary.
Social Media Marketing Tips For Small Online Business
Social media is important for any business and small ones or start up is by no means excluded. Social media can be the difference that makes a small online business successful, or unfortunately, fail very quickly. As social media marketing is so influential, there are a few tips that small businesses should be aware of.
Pick Your Platform Carefully
There are many different avenues for social media now and picking the correct one(s) can be critical. If the audience you are aiming for focus on one website, you need to focus on this too. There is no point spending precious money on marketing in a place where few people who might buy your product will go.
For example, fashion ecommerce finds great success on Pinterest, while Twitter is often touted as a top platform for finding business niche followers. This is not to say that Pinterest does not work for business, but since 85% of all Pinterest users are women who often buy as a result of Pins; this makes Pinterest a viable resource where women shoppers are the target audience.
It will take some in-depth research and testing to find those platforms for your target audience and niche, but it is well worth your while.
Be Available
Businesses with a physical presence are available on the phone and in person for their customers; online businesses are no different. If you don’t have a store or phone number for customers to contact you on, you must be available on social media. This means answering tweets, and comments that you receive.
Track Your Social Media Sites
Ensure you have some kind of way to track the number of visitors, comments, retweets etc. on your sites. This is the only way you will know which aspects of your marketing strategy are working. If no one is commenting on certain types of posts, it may be time to rethink these, as they are clearly not as effective as others are. If there are few visitors being sent from Twitter updates, you may want to re-think Twitter or even the followers that you are attracting to your profile.
Start Small
Do not try to master all the different social networks in one go; you will end up with half decent profiles, which is an ineffective strategy. Instead, focus on the one or two key sites that your intended audience will use most. Spend time building these up gradually, and only move over to another one when you are sure you can manage the increased workload, and that it will be worth it with the increased audience. Master one or two, and then move onto another.
Learn Automation
Certain sites have features that can be automated, such as following people when they start to follow you. Invest time in understanding these features, as they can be crucial to saving you time later. However, technology is no replacement for a human so make sure you check that it is working correctly from time to time.
Be Interactive
There is enough content on the internet that requires people to simply read. You need to make your website stand out from the others and interactive features are one way to do this. This could be simply having a weekly or monthly poll, small competitions or asking people to send reviews of your products. As people engage with your site, it will spread across social media sites thereby increasing exposure to your business.
Make Call To Actions Easy
A call to action is whatever you want your audience to do. For example, buy your eBook, buy products from your ecommerce site, signup to your email-marketing list, or buy an affiliate promotion.
Whatever your call to action, the whole point in any marketing strategy is to increase their conversions, so make this as easy as possible. Have links in your posts to your site and minimize the amount of steps people have to take to complete the Call To Action. Be clear in what you want them to do, have large buy buttons on your sales page and prominent opt-in forms that are not buried among other content.
You could also offer discounts and vouchers that are only available on your social media sites to encourage interaction, such as ‘10% off for those who share the post’. Not only does this give you an extra sale, but also it ensures the customer is also promoting your business to all their social media contacts.
Hire A Specialist
If you are new to online business or new to social media marketing it may be well worth your while to hire a marketing specialist who is an expert in social media. You really only get one chance to make a first impression with the social audience, and since social media marketing is an intricate balance of building relationships and promotion, an expert can be your best asset in creating and managing an effective social media campaign that will take your business to new heights of success.
Is Your Content Worthy Of A Like Or A Plus?
Content marketing has become extremely effective, and is a major component of a well-rounded marketing strategy. The method is particularly powerful on social media site like Facebook and Google+ due to the potential of great content going viral and helping amass followers and potential consumers of your brand and products very quickly.
But just posting content alone isn’t enough to harness the full power of social media. In order to gain followers, likes, and have your content and brand shared, your content must stand out and speak above all the other the noise the socially savvy online audience is surrounded by daily.
Here are some ways to make sure your content is worthy of a like or plus on social media.
Boast Your Brand
Social media is an excellent venue to saturate with your brand. Making sure that your company profiles and pages all have consistent brand names, logos, and design incorporated is a great way to obtain recognition of your market position and services. You can do this by using your branding or logo in the profile and cover photo fields of your profiles.
It’s also a great idea to make sure that your content always reflects your company missions, and any original content you’re creating and posting should have the same look and feel as your website and other marketing materials. This helps people more quickly recognize you, and if you’re spending the time to write and distribute excellent content, you want to make sure people associate it to your company.
Post Interesting, Interactive Content
Before you begin your content creation or procurement phase, take the time to do some research on the habits of your audience on social media. By learning and understanding what they’re interested in, liking, and sharing, you can customize your content to align with what they want and will consume hungrily.
Once you have a good understanding of what your ideal social consumer likes, create content around that desire. Take it up a level, and make sure it is compelling, interesting, and engaging. A great way to accomplish this is to make your content posts interactive by encouraging comments, and rewarding behavior you want to see such as post sharing or commenting.
Use Diverse Media
Text, images, and video are all options in posting on social media sites. Images stand out and capture audience attention. This is proven by the tremendous success of Pinterest for business with these impressive stats:
- 85% of Internet users on Pinterest are female
- 100 million users are on Pinterest
- 47% of Pinterest users purchased a product based on pins
- $58.95 is the average sales order value for visitors referred by Pinterest
- 67% Of Pinned Content Is From A Business Site
- 82% Of Pinterest users would rather follow a brand than a celebrity
Impressed? You should be.
Video is known to increase sales page conversions by 50%. There are more than 1 billion YouTube, which equates to 1/3 of all people on the Internet who watch hundreds of millions of hours on of video daily generating billions of views.
Video is key in any marketing plan, and in social media, it can be used to really entice and impress your target audience earning you those likes and shares that you need to propel your marketing campaign.
Make Sure You’re Present, And Active
Posting engaging and interactive content is vital to successful social media marketing, but alone, it isn’t quite enough. You need to be present on your page, posting often, and adding color and expertise in the comments as well. This creates a two-way dialogue with you and your followers, and shows them that you’re listening and care enough to respond.
Know When To Post
As you monitor your posts, and the attention each receives, pay attention to any trends or patterns in when your audience is most responsive and active on your page and posts. As you understand, better when people are online and most engaged with your posts, you could plan your future content during a time that most people will be likely to see it and have the chance to absorb it and take action.
Ask Questions
Asking a question along with your content you post will generate much more response, and you can use it to get a better read on what people think about what you’re posting, and adjust future content if needed. You can also be strategic in what you’re asking to subtly pitch your products or services. Think about the struggle or pain points your audience experiences, and ask a question that will generate a lot of commentary. After comments start coming in, you can position your offerings as the solution to the problem you posed in the form of a question.
By paying attention to these things, you can ensure that your content is like-worthy, and delight your consumers as well.
