Hashtag Marketing Types

• Branded Hashtags

The basic element of marketing in context to hashtags is to create your personalized branded hashtag. It should be simple, short, sweet, and able to stay in the reader’s minds. It should include your brand name or at least indicate it. If you find it hard to create your hashtag, you can research a little to explore if consumers are already using a specific hashtag for your brand without you even knowing it. If you like it, you might as well use it. This basic hashtag that defines your brand should then be attached to every tweet to ensure that it is hosted in the same domain, and people can easily access it through one click of a mouse.

• Community Hashtags

To engage with customers, brands generally have a predetermined hashtag related to the community built around the brand. These include but are not limited to just the name of the brand. Rather, they are created in such a manner that they define the community featured accordingly. This particular exercise benefits from many, amongst which ownership and belonging is a psychological feeling that drives consumers’ loyalty. It can also add feedback and user-centric content onto their profile and effectively communicate the specific brand’s existence with a single hashtag.

• Campaign Hashtags

This is considered to be from a campaign meant for marketing or a particular contest with an end date and a starting date. These hashtags are created to monitor entries coming in and evaluate the conversation sparking from such a campaign. While it is suggested that the company name be included, the major recommendation is to convey the entire message through a little catchphrase that sticks in the people’s minds.

Before you come up with a hashtag for any campaign, it is advised that you research using a social listening tool to understand the audience beforehand. The hashtag should be checked in various combinations, and it should avoid double meanings to ensure that the wrong message is not sent across.

• Event Hashtags

This is quite similar to the hashtag mentioned above in campaign hashtags. Events are also a limited time thing; hence these hashtags have a starting and ending date. If it is a recurring event, for instance, it happens annually, the same hashtag can be utilized, but if a specific theme surrounds it, each year should bring out a new hashtag. Brands generally tend to create catchy hashtags to start a conversation regarding the event.

During the event, tweets of general information or quotes from speakers are shared along with the hashtag to create a communal bond with those staying up to date with the hashtag.  It is best to introduce the hashtag concept before the main event itself so participants and those interested can view the event’s occurrences even during and after the event itself.

• Trending Hashtags

Another strategy that marketing teams often use is to jump on the bandwagon and write upon a specific trending hashtag. This helps to raise the reach and allows you to create such content that can go viral. However, all such updates on these trends are extremely fast-paced and can be quite short-lived, so it may not be easy to keep up.

While you are given a chance to raise the outreach of your content and profile, it can be extremely difficult to keep up with the growing pace of tweets and how quickly they come in. Without understanding the origin of a viral hashtag, you may not be able to cope with the virality of it.

• Holiday Hashtags

For a calendar, social media managers generally tend to use a content calendar to specify what needs to be put up on various occasions. Surrounding holidays, it is advised that a particular hashtag be created to give your brand the fun and excitement people look for in a holiday. However, your content must relate to the type of audience you have, and in some way or the other, it indicates what your brand stands for. But make sure that it does not impose it or forcefully push it down someone; it should be a subtle way of engaging through a holiday-specific hashtag.

Implementing and Tracking a Hashtag Marketing Strategy

Looking for the Right Hashtags

Similar to the keywords that you target to raise your optimization for the search engine, you can research various hashtags to be used through an analysis of keywords. This provides the quantity and frequency of these posts related to the hashtag that is chosen. You can use various forms of the hashtag to see what is being used more often.

There is an existence of a few methods that can be used to start on various platforms. On Twitter, you can use the ‘Advanced Search’ option to create a connection between hashtags and keywords. It will also help you in where and how to use these hashtags.

Paying attention to your competitors and audience

Despite having a foolproof mechanism to stay updated with the growing trends in the market, it is always recommended that you keep your competitors in clear sight. Through your research, you can find out what hashtags they have been using and which campaign they have associated it with. You can also look at the activity surrounding these posts and the overall results of how they are using their strategy.

This is a tool used for analysis to hear what people around you are interested in so you can use the content that can grasp people’s attention most easily. With the accumulation of data through thorough research, you can also be inspired to create new strategies and subsequent hashtags for the company you have.

Your rival companies and knowing what users are talking about can provide you a sense of direction towards how your tweets should be designed and what particular topic to target. It provides you an edge on giving virility to your content, which is what brands are looking for all the time.

Reaching out to Influencers to improve your reach.

If you have been dedicated to engagement with the audience, you will know more about what kinds of people they are interested in, i.e., influencers. To gather more followers and engagements, it is recommended that you take on board those influencers who your audience trusts wholly. This will help you create a brand image and loyalty that may not be possible otherwise.

Tracking Your Success

In terms of availability, you can gain access to several tracking tools to measure results and plan marketing strategies for the future. The optimal solution will be based upon the kind of hashtag you are planning to use to connect with the goals you have in mind.

Metrics/Indicators to monitor includes:

• Mentions: If your hashtag is effective, it will prompt your followers to interact with the brand and automatically generate mentions with your hashtag on it. Monitoring this indicator is extremely important.
• Views: Before you launch any campaign with a specified hashtag, it is good to look at the number of views you would normally get. Then, look at it after gauge how well the hashtag has helped get your brand across to people.
• Followers: Normally, it is believed that a successful hashtag will provide you with a boost to your followers, but if you do not see that happening, it is better to tweak your hashtag in such a manner that it is able to live up to the objectives you previously assigned.

Monitoring of Campaign Hashtag

For any campaign with a hashtag, there is a need to get a mechanism that effectively monitors progress. Through the Sprout’s Smart Inbox, you can filter through a system of tags and keywords to help you keep track of how the hashtag is doing across different networks.

Hashtag Listening

Tracking conversation is important to grant efficacy to any hashtags, which can be achieved through social listening. Through a bit of research, you can find out more about phrases and keywords that people usually use.

With the right analysis tools, you can gather the relevant insight to see if your marketing strategy is working and how it can be improved for future reference.

With an optimal strategy around your hashtag, you can set the stage to take your brand across various platforms and create the conversation/interactive measures with consumers that all brands are interested in.

Ready to measure your impact?

Discover insights automatically and effortlessly with WebDab. Track twitter hashtags, keywords or user accounts with full in-depth analytics reports.