For years now, hashtags have been a common feature on social media, appearing on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
When used correctly, they are an excellent tool for expanding your reach and increasing your engagement, even in medical device social media marketing. We’ll explore what hashtags can help you achieve and how to make the most of them.
What do social media hashtags do?
Despite how they are sometimes used, hashtags do actually serve a purpose. People using social media platforms can search for and follow hashtags, meaning they will see only posts with that hashtag. These posts may be simply for entertainment, education, or to keep up with news. Whatever the reason, hashtags help people see the posts they want to see.
Hashtags also act as an indicator of what the content of the post is about, which can help when it comes to beating the pesky social media algorithms. On Instagram, users can visit a discovery page where they are shown posts that may interest them. If Instagram knows that a user likes to see posts about a certain topic, using those contextual hashtags may help your posts appear there.
Beyond expanding your reach, though, hashtags can be useful for developing trends or running competitions. They can be a helpful filtering tool, so when you ask users to get involved and post something related to your company, asking them to use a unique hashtag will allow you to see all the relevant posts at once.
1. Mix high-volume and low-volume hashtags
When it comes to choosing hashtags, it’s not just about selecting the ones that sound best or describe the post. Believe it or not, data plays a role in deciding which hashtags you should use.
When you search for a hashtag, you can see how popular it is based on the number of posts it has. Similarly, you can use a tool like BuzzSumo to do your research. The instinct may be to go for all the high-volume hashtags, but as with choosing keywords for SEO, a mixture of high- and low-volume hashtags is actually the better method.
2. Don’t overdo it
This is because, although fewer people search for the less popular hashtags, you are more likely to appear and be seen by those who do.
Conversely, although you may potentially be seen by more people when using a popular hashtag, there is more competition, so your post has less chance of being noticed. Using a mixture of both is a way to cover all bases.
Although it may be tempting to use as many hashtags as possible on a post to increase your reach, this might not be the best idea. Not only does it look spammy to those viewing the post, giving a bad impression of your company, but it is also extremely time-consuming.
Instead, we recommend using a maximum of three on platforms like LinkedIn, but more on visual platforms like Instagram. One of the hashtags you use should act as a filter, such as your company or product name. That way, if people want to see posts only about your company or product, they can use the hashtag as a filter.
3. Make sure they are relevant
There is little benefit to using hashtags that aren’t closely related to the content of the post.
Although other hashtags may have more followers, if your content isn’t relevant to them, it will not only be annoying and give a bad impression of your company, but they’re also not your customers, and they’re unlikely to convert. In that sense, it’s completely pointless.
Instead, it’s better to focus on finding hashtags that are relevant to your company and that your potential customers may be searching for.
4. Don’t use punctuation
Hashtags obviously start with the hashtag symbol, but they can’t contain any other punctuation or symbols. This can be frustrating, as it sometimes means that the phrase appears incorrectly.
For instance, a phrase like “We’re here!” would have to appear as #WereHere. Punctuation breaks up the hashtag, so only the part before the punctuation would actually count.
Try to work around this by editing the phrase or choosing different hashtags, or you could simply post it and let people’s minds fill in the blanks.
5. Keep it short
Long hashtags are distracting and unlikely to have many searchers.
You may be tempted to hashtag your tagline as a reminder of your messaging or something similar, but think about it—what's the point? If it’s not a hashtag that already has a following or that you’re using to develop a trend or run a competition, it’s not going to be seen by anyone, so it’s not really doing anything for you.
Short, snappy hashtags that people are actually searching for are the way to go.