Hashtag Best Practices
By Bill Fletcher
Where Did The Hashtag Come From?
If you have been on Twitter, you may have seen a “hashtag.” To put it simply, a hash tag is simply a way for people to search for tweets that have a common topic and to begin a conversation. For example, if you search on #LOST (or #Lost or #lost, because it’s not case-sensitive), you’ll get a list of tweets related to the TV show. What you won’t get are tweets that say “I lost my wallet yesterday” because “lost” isn’t preceded by the hash tag.
Twitter didn’t invent the hashtag (#), but it certainly popularized it with the masses.
Once more commonly referred to as the pound sign, online use of the hashtag began on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) in the late 1990s, where it was used to categorise items into groups. In August 2007, designer Chris Messina asked his followers how they felt about using the pound sign to group conversations on the micro-blogging platform, and thus became the first person to use the hashtag on Twitter.
After that, Twitter never looked back, and the hashtag was eventually adopted by Instagram, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and seemingly every other major digital platform. Today, hashtags are everywhere and an important part of every modern marketing strategy.
Instagram and Hashtags
Regular Instagram users see hashtags as tools for improving the network experience, whereas online marketers see the potential for building communities, increasing brand recognition and extending business reach.
Home based business and Network Marketing business use hastags for to drive potential buyer or potential distributors to their business.
Small business owners who are new to Instagram tend to make two mistakes when it comes to using hashtags: using too many hashtags and using irrelevant hashtags.
As a general rule, every image and video your business uploads to Instagram should include a short caption. While you can include up to 30 hashtags, consider using no more than three to five hashtags.
Instagram accounts that overload their descriptions with hashtags in an effort to reach more users come across as blatant and desperate marketers.
It may be tempting to use popular hashtags in the hopes of reaching thousands (or millions) more people on Instagram. For instance, one of the most popular hashtags is #love and it’s been applied to more than 184 million photos. If an accountant uses that hashtag with photos of his office, he is not doing the network—or his business—any favors.
Some of the top 30 hashtags such as #food and #fashion may be relevant to your business and are therefore fair game. However, users are bound to ignore and even blacklist businesses that routinely abuse and spam hashtags.
How Top Brands Use Instagram Hashtags
Large companies that have found marketing success on Instagram use popular hashtags sparingly—they do not blindly apply irrelevant hashtags to their content. Instead, those companies are more comfortable either dominating hashtags or creating new ones that are related to their brands.
For example, during the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, Nike posted many inspiring photographs of children playing soccer in disadvantaged neighborhoods and the only hashtag they used was their own slogan: #justdoit.
Nike posted photos during the 2014 FIFA World Cup with their slogan #justdoit.
Clearly, Nike intends to dominate their own hashtag on Instagram and will not risk diluting the effort with additional hashtags. And let’s face it, if you’re looking for inspirational sports stuff, searching for #justdoit is a no-brainer.
Organic and gourmet food giant Whole Foods Market uses one or two hashtags per photograph with the intention of describing a food item or a place. For example, “Power Breakfast! Oatmeal topped with #chia seeds, goji berries, kiwi, blueberries, bee pollen, and Maca powder from @nutritionnut_.”
Bring attention to specific products with Instagram hashtags.
Using ingredient hashtags like #chia puts Whole Foods Market’s images right in front of their target.
Starbucks believes in using three to five hashtags for the purpose of maximizing content interaction (usually named after one of their beverages). They also make great use of hashtags like #glutenfree to show up in searches not necessarily related to coffee.
This image was hashtagged with #glutenfree to let people know Starbucks has specialty snack options.
Conclusion
Instagram is a mature, full-fledged social network that uses hashtags to organize and categorize its vast collection of image and video content.
Failure to use hashtags renders Instagram content virtually private. On the other hand, using the right hashtags helps put your content in front of people searching for keywords and phrases associated with your brand or business.
Social media marketers can take advantage of hashtags to increase their reach as long as they choose hashtags carefully and don’t overuse them.
What do you think? Do you use hashtags as an Instagram marketing tactic? Do you have your own hashtag or do you use other popular ones?
Leave your comments below.
Thanks to Eric Sornoso for the content of this post. Eric’s in site and knowledge about the use of Hastages is of great importance to anyone using Hashtags for Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and others.
