The Power Of #Hashtags Across Your Marketing
To a beginner in the social media world, hashtags might seem confusing and pointless at first. But if you understand their purpose and learn how to use them they are a powerful tool to help you engage with your patients and increase brand awareness.
To create a hashtag, all you need to do is include a # at the beginning of a relevant keyword or phrase. Essentially, it makes the content of your post accessible to everyone with similar interests, even if they’re not your followers. Hashtags appear as clickable links on posts and will display a real-time feed of every other post tagged with the same hashtag. Choosing the right hashtag can greatly broaden the reach of social media posts to thousands of potential patients. You can insert hashtags anywhere in your posts: front, middle or end.
They are extremely powerful but nothing turns people off more than a post with excessive or overly lengthy hashtags. As a general rule you should keep hashtags to a maximum of two or three when tweeting and for Instagram, the ideal number is five. Always remember to use clear, unique and relevant hashtags.
Numbers are allowed in hashtags but spaces are an absolute no. Even if your hashtag contains multiple words, group them all together. If you want to differentiate between words, use capitals instead as uppercase letters will not alter the search results, so searching for #DentalPractice will show the same results as #dentalpractice.
- Content Hashtags: If you are totally new to hashtags, first consider using ones that directly relate to the service you offer (Dental specific).
- Trending Hashtags: Another great way to boost your brand’s visibility is using existing hashtags that have grown popular among millions of users, also known as ‘trending’ hashtags.
- Brand-Specific Hashtags: The problem with using popular hashtags is that your posts might get lost within the hundreds of posts using the same hashtags. Its a good idea to create your own dedicated brand-specific hashtags.
The key to creating an effective brand-specific hashtag is to ensure that there is no one else using the same hashtag. When creating marketing campaign-specific hashtags, make sure to give users a compelling incentive to use them. These can be used for general branding, promotions, events, contests or other marketing campaigns.
Most major social media platforms support hashtags:
- Twitter: Twitter is the birthplace of the hashtag. The “Trends” sidebar of your Twitter feed gathers a list of hashtags you might be interested in, based on your tweets. When you search for a hashtag on Twitter, there are three ways to filter the results. The “Top” option displays the most relevant and popular posts, including those from users you don’t follow. “All” shows you every tweet that uses the specific hashtag in real time, and “People you follow” will only display results from users you are following.
- Facebook: Facebook only recently added the “hashtag” in June 2013 and it hasnt picked up much since. Nevertheless, clicking on Facebook hashtags will take you to a list of posts containing the same hashtag. The results are not limited to people you know.
- Instagram: Hashtags can be used to complement photos shared on Instagram and help you discover new accounts and pick up followers.
- Google +: When you click on a hashtag in Google+, the search results will include the original hashtag as well as posts with similar tags and keywords. Google search results display on the left side of the page, while hashtag results from within Google+ appear on the right.
- Pinterest: Use Pinterest hashtags to mark and search for content. Click on the hashtag in a pin description to navigate results that contain the exact hashtag, plus pins with the same word or phrase in the description.
…There is no set list of hashtags so you can create any hashtag youd like!
If you would like any further information then give the Dental Design team a call on: 01202677277.
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