The UX Designer’s Toolbox (Part 1): Research
January 22, 2015
The UX Designer’s Toolbox (Part 2): Prototyping
February 3, 2015
When hashtags first emerged they were seen as only for nerds. Today, hashtags help ensure that your tweets don’t get lost in the sea of conversations, but also provide a way to entertain, attract customers, publicize, and generate attention for events and organizations. Here is a quick guide to help you better understand the use of the crazy hashtag thing everyone is doing.
What Is A Hashtag?
The # (hashtag) symbol is used to mark keywords or topics in your tweet. Twitter originally made the hashtag for users to categorize their messages and help them show more easily in Twitter search. You can incorporate your hashtag anywhere within your tweet – at the beginning, middle, or end. If you click on a hashtagged word, it will show you all of the other Tweets marked with that keyword. Hashtags that are commonly used are marked as “Trending Topics.” So what is the real reason for using hashtags in your inbound marketing strategy?
Hashtags help group together conversations taking place on social networks. People insert their thoughts, comments or strategies into social media conversations with a simple # in front of their targeted keyword. The trick is to hashtag keywords that other people would use when looking for the content contained in your message. You can do a quick search for keywords prior to posting your message to see which hashtags are popular.
Why Should I Use Hashtags?
Hashtags help anyone find information about the topics they are searching for. For example, if you were tweeting about attending a concert, you might hashtag the artist’s name and the venue you were at. At Waypost, we used “Free #eBook on 10 #SEO mistakes to avoid” for one our inbound marketing campaigns. Anybody searching for #eBook and #SEO saw our tweet. Your tweets can be customized to the audience you are targeting to help people find your company more easily.
Hashtags have a powerful effect on your customer interaction and engagement. Once your customers come across your hashtag they can favorite, retweet, or comment on your tweet. If they retweet your tweet, it will reach all of their followers where it could lead more people back to your page. You can easily search Google to find which hashtags are “trending” and determine which hashtags are best to find the audience you are looking for.
Contact Waypost
Hashtags are powerful marketing tools that can lead to a huge increase in reach and have a great impact on your brand. The key is understanding how they work and creating a unified social media strategy to be implemented across all the platforms that use this poweful tool.
Waypost can develop and implement a cohesive social media strategy that leverages the power of social media and boosts your brand engagement, driving traffic to your website, and turning browsers into buyers. Contact us at Waypost to get you started on implementing hashtags into your inbound marketing strategy. 
