How to use hashtags to build community and social media influence

It is very important to have a strategy around hashtags yet many people still don’t understand how hashtags work.

Here is a summary of a recent Clubhouse discussion on best practice. The conversation looked at hashtag strategy from a Global Brand & individual perspective on how to drive most effective strategy for Brand accounts, Internal Execs & Experts and External Influencers.

1. Much more than amplifying content

Most people think of using hashtags to increase the reach of their content - this is only 1 part! Here is an acronym to remember the 6 key areas – SCREAM!

• Search - enables you to be found by your target audience & track relevant topical discussions
• Community - enables you to reach the right group of people
• Reputation - enables you to develop the brand you are looking for by associating yourself with key topics
• Engagement - enables you to follow, connect and start a dialogue with topical community experts
• Amplification - enables your content to be seen by many more people who follow your hashtags
• Measurement - enables you to track your impact on the conversation around a specific hashtag

2. Research & document strategy as a central social media team

As a brand you want to be known in specific conversations and your content is created around specific topics so invest the time to get this right and empower teams internally.

• Put together hashtag libraries relating to certain topics - this helps with consistency to develop your brand
• When you have 100’s of employees scattered around the world, having some sort of documentation with insights into which hashtags can be used is important and keeps things organised
• Popular hashtags within the channels you own
• Research who the people are who follow certain hashtags and then build out your community and target specific people through the use of hashtags

The document where you keep hashtags for work can grow and evolve, it shouldn’t be a static document.

Whatever you use ensure hashtags are used with intention. When using hashtags, think about facilitating word-of-mouth. If you use random hashtags you may end up in a conversation you don’t want to be in.

3. Adapt your strategy for each channel

Using #s can significantly increase the reach and engagement of your content. Equally when people use too many hashtags it is not compelling and can reduce engagement & reach.

Don’t see hashtags as ‘one size fits all’ – platforms are built differently to use hashtags in different formats so it is important to understand the cultural differences. For example on Twitter, #AI has a very large community, but moving over to LinkedIn, you actually reach more people using #ArtificialIntelligence in place of its acronym.

A rule of thumb is as follows:

• LinkedIn - 3-5 hashtags recommended
• Twitter - 2-3 hashtags recommended
• Instagram - Circa 11 recommended (up to 30 can be used!)
• Facebook - 1-2 recommended

Twitter and Instagram in particular have a very mature hashtag strategy for listening, community and driving engagement. LinkedIn on the other hand is far more immature as a platform. B2B Buyers on Linkedin are still not really using hashtags for search and if they do they rarely look into that conversation and follow the hashtags.

4. Use big & small community hashtags in combination

In order to get the right combination of think of using hashtags like eating a sandwich!

• Bread: large hashtags, the ones with the most people, these hashtags get you in the main category of conversation (e.g. #HR, #Automotive #finance)
• Meat (or vegetarian alternative!): Next tier down, fewer people but more relevant to your content and still tied to the top hashtags (e.g. #futureofwork, #driverlesscars #fintech)
• Condiments: these will be more niche and extremely relevant to the content (e.g. #remoteworking, #RPA, #bitcoin)

On LinkedIn for example use 2 large community hashtags that work for your industry as your bread then choose more specialist topics as your meat and condiments.

In marketing #employeeadvocacy has 3,739 followers on Twitter and 1,291 followers on LinkedIn whereas #B2BMarketing has 15,125 followers on Twitter and 33,760 followers on LinkedIn so if you use #employeeadvoacy on its own you may not reach those marketers that work in B2BMarketing and are also interested in employee advocacy.

 In one way you want to ‘stand’ out if you’re a brand or person, you also want to ‘stand’ in and be part of that community. Stand in relevant communities to connect, participate and get your content seen and stand out by developing your brand voice to cut through all of the social content out there. Big picture elements, and personalised elements, whether you’re a brand or a person, you’re part of something. Hashtags can be good for ‘standing’ in, but they are often overused and used in the wrong contexts.

 5. Popular Industry hashtags vs. create new hashtags

It all depends on what you are trying to achieve. Creating new hashtags can be extremely effective for building a private community or campaign tracking as the content is unique to you such as internal comms, campaigns, events or personal brand content.

 For use cases such as Social Selling, Thought Leadership, Account-Based Marketing and Employee Advocacy it is much better to leverage existing community hashtags to reach and connect with more relevant people.

 Employee engagement is very different from Social Selling for example. Creating a purposeful echo-chamber where you use employee hashtags to drive employee engagement is a great tactic whereas with social selling if you encourage Execs, Internal Experts and Sales to use certain hashtags it may mean you end up in an echo-chamber rather than influencing the buyer.

 6. Leverage Social Media Training to cover the basic principles

Education is very important – don’t assume that everyone knows how they work! There are basic guidelines that will make your content more successful so focus on educating your brand community managers, employees & external influencers through online training, playbooks and coaching sessions.

 On a quarterly basis communicate the hashtag best practices – what to do, what not to do, so that people who aren’t sure have a guideline across channels. Example of what not to do could be ‘#Don’tusehashtagsthatarefullsentences!’

Try to get the balance right between providing guidelines & treating employees as individuals as people have different topics of expertise and passions so will naturally approach hashtags differently. A good example of this is with Execs & Experts - a lot of Execs might know what they want to talk about but might not have the time to research which #s work best. So do the research and prescribe the relevant #s for them through your central social media.

7. Assign hashtags to your personal brand

Having personal hashtags are good for your values, but you need to know the difference between hashtags that are searchable and those personal hashtags. Hashtags are the glue for conversation with people who don’t know you. A personal hashtag is doing its job is when you relate that hashtag to a person. #PresstheDamnButton is synonymous with Brian Fanzo as an example in the marketing industry.

 8. Listen to hashtag debates to help align content

By listening to a topical community you can research which #s are trending and therefore what content is going to best resonate with your community

You can analyse groups of individuals and understand what hashtags they are using and which conversations you can engage with. As a brand if there is an audience that uses particular language then you can identify that language and create content + hashtags using that language and apply the relevant hashtags – you will then find yourself in the community as creator and audience!

 9. Hashtags improve your discoverability

They can be used to find people as #AI or #cloud is much easier to search on a bio than ‘ai’ or ‘cloud’ which will deliver false positives through the English language. Consider applying a horizontal industry # with a vertical to add context. E.g. #AI AND #Healthcare. Remember, if you find hashtags in a bio you expect to see more content on those topics in their feed so make sure your #s are really relevant to the content you’re promoting. If you put FinTech in your bio people will expect you to be expert in that topic and talking about it on social media

 10. Use hashtags consistently

Be consistent with your use of hashtags, then you’ll start to appear more in the hashtag lists and you’ll have a presence when it comes to those hashtags. Also make sure that you connect your #s to your SEO strategy. Whether or not you use a hashtag, if you’re using the right language in your twitter bio you’ll be found – Google doesn’t even recognise the hashtag as being a hashtag

 11. When should you avoid using hashtags?

 In paid promotion - It is lazy and bad practice. When you’re creating paid campaigns there’s no need for hashtags because the targeting is like invisible hashtags. Also it can mean that people click on the hashtag rather than the link which is not where you want them to go!

When you don’t need the help! When you are driving significant engagement hashtags are not as important as you already have the organic reach within your networks. If you have a very engaged community and you are not trying to expand your community then you don’t need to use #s.

 12. Use hashtags when commenting on posts

Leaving insightful comments on other people’s content is a form of content creation in itself so add in hashtags to your comment. Don’t just say ‘great thanks for sharing’ - if you’re adding value to the conversation then it helps you and the author increase the reach and engagement of the post.

 13. Stories is a whole new ballgame!

 This requires a whole new debate. As a topline summary they work differently to posts as, when you add a hashtag to Instagram Stories for example, you can place the hashtag in a sticker, in text, or by way of a location tag. The hashtag goes directly on the image and can be stylized just like all text and stickers. When posted in text, linked hashtags are often underlined.

 Don’t forget that hashtags give people the opportunity to get certain engagement, but then people have to follow up with the engagement!