The Fine Art of Crafting the Perfect Hashtag(s) For Your Business

If you think that crafting a powerful hashtag involves adding the hash symbol next to some random words, think again. Creating a hashtag that lives, breathes and stays with people involves a little bit of art, a dash of science and a whole lot of creativity.

While it makes perfect sense to create a new hashtag based on the name of your business, you’re still completely free to create another “signature” hashtag that speaks to your audience, promotes your brand and leaves them with a much deeper understanding of your business.

Wondering how many hashtags to use and whether they need to be platform-specific? Alex York answers those questions and many more eternal ones in this insightful Sprout Social article. (We’ve gleaned the major points and paraphrased to keep things short and sweet.)

Create your hashtag(s) with your end goals in mind. The idea is to have a hashtag tied to a metric; that ensures effective marketing. Do this before you start coming up with clever phrases or keywords for your brand.

Hashtags are another great way to increase organic traffic, clicks and engagement to your social platforms. All these things should factor into your social media ROI strategy. So before you start, consider the hashtag goals best aligned with your brand goals, such as:

• Increase brand conversations with your company
• Be more visible on a specific social network
• Increase total link clicks
• Measure total reach
• Increase mentions

These goals should tie in with the aims of your overall social media marketing strategy. Planning goals first is always the best step toward seeing results.

Which Social Network Though?

Once your goals are crystal-clear, it’s time to consider where your audience lives and how you’re going to speak to them. We always recommend using the same hashtags in multiple social networking platforms to increase exposure.

However, here are a few things to consider for each network’s approach to hashtags.

Twitter Hashtags

Hashtags started on Twitter. So you know this is the perfect space to use hashtags for discovery, conversations and hopping on major trends. If you’re using a popular keyword in your hashtag, you have the chance to get more eyes on your Tweet.

Instagram Hashtags

While Twitter supports images and videos, users tend to engage more with visual content on Instagram. This platform is perfect for contests, promotions and other heavily-visual content.

Facebook Hashtags

Facebook hashtags are unique. While they’re not nearly as popular as Instagram or Twitter, hashtags are still effective here. With Twitter you see every Tweet using a specific hashtag. But on Facebook, hashtags categorize by popularity and date used. However, you can filter by who posted the hashtag, tagged location and date posted.

Now that you have your goals and network(s) mapped out, it’s time to start brainstorming ideas. However, there’s an important balance between getting too creative or being too dull. Hashtags have to be unique and relevant to your business. Ideally, you’d strike the delicate balance of clearly communicating your brand and injecting some creative juices into the equation.

Curious about which hashtags to use for your business or startup? Contact a MENA Socialite representative and we’d be glad to help!

This blog post is brought to you by MENA Socialite. For more great content, contact the MENA Socialite Team.