What are hashtags?

Did you know that the word hashtag was added to the Oxford Dictionary in 2010 and the Scrabble Dictionary in 2014?The hashtag was originally created as a way to promote content in Tweets. Now it’s used everywhere and we have a feeling it is here to stay!Using hashtags is the easiest and most popular way for you to categorise your content on social media. It allows you and your content to be discoverable on a very wide scale and lets you engage with other users that have the same interest as your content. However, there are (with most things in life) rules to using hashtags, and you need to ensure that you are using them to your advantage.  Here at The Marketing Collective, we’ve put some hints and tips together on how to use #hashtags – the most popular form of communication on social media:

Make sure that you do not put too many words together for no reason and turn it into a hashtag.

Doesanyonewanttoreadasentencewithoutthespaces? Exactly! The truth is no and you will lose followers. Of course, every now and then there is no harm in having a little fun if you can be creative, but just do not over do it!

Cater your hashtag for each social media platform.

This may seem like an odd tip but on Twitter, users use hashtags to round up what they are tweeting and tend to be more focused on a conversation topic, where as on instagram, hashtags tend to sum up what is in the photo/describe the photo.Researching about hashtags and how to use them properly is always a good start and Twitter provides guide on how to choose a hashtag: (https://blog.twitter.com/2013/how-to-choose-a-hashtag)

#Do #not #hashtag #everything!

There is such a thing as over hashtagging and this can be very annoying for users to read. Use up to 3 maximum per post to have the most engagement and to make your message focused and on point – it clearly defines your brand and what you are trying to say to your audience.

Review your hashtag before promoting it

Two examples of when a hashtag went wrong #nowthatcherisdead - What began as a tribute to Margaret Thatcher (“Now Thatcher is dead”) was quickly misread by thousands of Twitter users as “Now that Cher is dead,” and #susanalbumparty, no explanation needed!Something to note that adding capital letters to hashtags, make no difference at all. Also, make sure that it’s a branded hashtag that you can monitor and not something like #competition as there will be thousands of businesses/users using this hashtag and it will be very hard to monitor what posts are for you.Remember, the point of using a hashtag it to tag your message with a particular thought or topic!So, we hope you enjoyed our #teabreakinsight