Tip #3 Target Your Audience

Don’t hashtag everything that you post, but wait for a post that’s relevant to your audience. For example if you are a real estate agent selling homes in Connecticut, instead of using #sallysmithrealestate, you may want to hashtag #homebuyers in order to target your customer or you can even get more specific and tag #firsttimehomebuyers.

Important Tip:  Creating your own Hashtag is something you want to carefully plan. It can be powerful or a failure. Before creating your own hashtag answer the following questions:

For low or no budget hashtags:

•        Will this hashtag be supported by a marketing campaign or spend?
•        Can more than one person use it?
•        Will it be consistently used?
•        Can it be read clearly and not be taken offensively?
•        Do you think it will be in use over 6-12 months?

For Campaigns and paid promotion to reinforce the hashtag:

•        Will it be consistently used?
•        Can it be read clearly and not be taken offensively?
•        How much planned exposure/impressions will it receive?
•        Is it integrated into all the marketing campaign touchpoints?

Tip #4 Check out competitors #Hashtags

Nothing wrong to see what your competitors are doing and how they are using hashtags. If anything, you might learn something. You can even see what are the most keywords used.  Make sure to look at engagement on those posts with hashtags. Better? If not, ignore them.

Hashtagify.me. Search different keywords throughout Twitter and Instagram and see the top influencers for that keyword.

Tip #5 Analyze Trending #Hashtags

Beyond looking at what your competitors or “influencers” are using see what’s the most popular.

If there’s a topic that’s trending or a topic within your industry write it down then use it right away so you can jump on that bandwagon too. Get suggestions.

RiteTag.com. Provides hashtag suggestions based on real-time data.

Hashtags that spread quickly and get used by a lot different users begin to trend. That means that the keyword term is popular and getting widely used online. That doesn’t mean that every hashtag you set out to use should trend. It all depends on why you’re using your hashtag.

Now get out there and get hashtag happy!