Monitoring Hashtags

By Adam  |  22 Apr 2016 12:00:00

Social media marketing is something which you don't do a vacuum. What I mean by that is that you need to be aware of what is going on on each social media network as a whole. Social media sites aren't a place for you to post an endless stream of self-promotions, they're a place for you to engage with others and to be part of a community – as a result of that, you’ll make more sales. But the thing is, you have a business to run; how do you have time to find out what's popular at any given time? Well, thankfully, most social media sites make it very easy.

I'll talk mainly about Facebook and Twitter in this blog post, since they are the two most popular. On Twitter all of the current, most popular hashtags are listed to the left of the screen and you only need to click on them to get an idea of what they're all about. As these popular hashtags are listed on the main page, lots of people will click on them and so writing tweets with them will increase your tweets' chances of getting seen. Having said that, there are also going to be a lot of tweets using those hashtags, so there is also the risk that you'll get drowned out. But popular hashtags are always worth going in for. If you have a look around at other Twitter users in the same area as you, make note of which hashtags they use, as you may be able to use them too. Sometimes the smaller (but still popular) hashtags can be even more effective. Facebook also allows you to see the popular discussion points by showing you what is trending - posting subjects in those areas can be just as useful as tweeting popular hashtags.

So if your social media marketing hasn't been quite as effective as you'd hoped, perhaps this strategy can help you to improve. Almost every site is using hashtags these days, so one thing you might also like to try doing is experimenting with a few different hashtags, because you never know just what might prove to be very effective. However you decide to market your business on social media, I hope that it will be very effective!