Hashtag Marketing

Introduction

Hashtag trend has been a world-changing movement. It is one of the most common things today in this world of Internet and social media platforms. Hashtags have become a new way of brand promotion and strategy for raising brand awareness. The inclination of people towards digital platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. has led to the development of Hashtag marketing. 

Hashtag marketing empowers digital creators, promoters, businesses, influencers etc. to market their product and to aware consumers of their product. Hashtags are simply keywords that are used to boost impressions, to make content more searchable, to encourage users to consider the brand, to optimize the product search etc.

The social media platforms and other digital platforms uses hashtag marketing globally and hashtags actually make brands and products visible in digital platforms. Also, hashtags are used to optimize searches for users. Not only for commercial presence, hashtags are frequently used to promote events, campaigns, programs etc.  For Instance, this week #QuarantineLife and #Coronavirus are trending hashtags.

Reasons for Hashtag Marketing

Hashtags marketing has become an efficient digital marketing strategies with huge offerings and potential for businesses. Understanding, accessing and executing the relevant hashtag into the marketing campaign of the organizations and businesses can impact the brand visibility, engagement and audience reason. Some of the prime reasons for adapting hashtag marketing as a marketing strategies are:

1. Hashtag marketing is a contemporary marketing concept. The digital platform and algorithm are hashtag friendly. Using relevant and popular hashtags, business can make content discoverable and accessible.
2. Companies and business involve and engage in hashtag marketing to remain relevant. Hashtag marketing tap the latest trend and topics. Companies engage in this marketing so that they follow the trend and remain evident. Showing the existence and incorporating this marketing helps companies to remain visible among the audience.
3. Hashtag has become a tool for searching, in digital platform. Individuals or customers search their interest via hashtag. Companies and businesses use hashtag to reach their target market effectively. Specific and niche hashtag helps business to reach such niche target group.
4. Business, to segregate their customer base, uses the hashtag. Hashtags helps people of like interest and content connect with each other. Brands promote their unique hashtag and individuals follow the hashtag to get updated. Similarly, social cause related hashtag let people connect for same cause. For instance, #vegan in any vegan related post or content help vegan people connect and share. This is equal for any community.
5. Another reason for hashtag marketing is that it has the viral potential. Any good or bad about any content or product or issue can be quickly reciprocated via hashtag. Hashtag has a greater potential to make the content viral. Companies wish their hashtag to get viral for good. When such hashtag gets viral, it can create buzz across the world.
   

Importance of Hashtags 

1. Hashtags help to increase the social media presence as they make the content viewable by individuals who have an interest in the hashtags.
2. It helps to build a brand of the business by engaging with customers and informing customers about what is trending.
3. Hashtags are search keywords which help interested individuals to access and to communicate over interested topics. For instance, Twitter hashtags encourage  people to participate in conversations with the same topic. Instagram hashtags help people with interest to find and to share what they like.
4.  Hashtags convey and spread a specific message i.e. to educate or to aware people. Hashtags are the fastest medium to convey the message among the group. Most of the organizations working for society, environment and sustainability have joined the social media platform and have been using hashtags to make people aware. #Coronavirus has been the trending hashtags for this month. In the situation of need, hashtags are becoming the fastest medium to share and to reach out to people in the society.
5. Hashtags have become a marketing strategy to promote the product or services or to promote the campaign. It gives the post more exposure. #Shareacoke was a trending tag from Coca Cola Company to promote their “Share a Coke” Campaign.

Hashtags for Marketing

Branded Hashtags

Branded hashtags simply means promotion of the product of service offered. Hashtags are used in the post with the brand name or unique promotional tags that reflect the brand. For instance, #justdoit is the brand hashtag for Nike and #imlovingit is the brand hashtag for McDonalds.

Event Hashtags

Event hashtags have a start and an end date and generally used to market the event or to make people aware. Any annual events of the business might have their own hashtags. Any conference, meeting, annual fest. For instance, #Christmas2020 #Happynewyear2020 #XYZannualfest etc. are some of the examples of event hashtags.

Campaign Hashtags

Campaign Hashtags are are a part of marketing a campaign. Brand creates specific hashtags to convey the message clearly and to promote the slogan of the campaign. Campaign marketing can be of a brand or an organization or a bigger party. For instance, #VisitNepal2020 was the promotional hashtag for Nepal to promote its Tourism Year 2020. Similarly, #Shareacoke #IceBucketChallenge #LetsDoLunch #ThrowMeBack etc. some of the trending campaign hashtags from the multinational world-recognized brands.

Trending Hashtags

Trending hashtags are simply the strategy to create the buzz about the product, service or topic. They are to let the people know about the topic and aware them about what is trending in the market. Trending hashtags can be used for product or for any promotion or any incident. For example, #metoo hashtag was a sensational and trending hashtag that created a movement for it. Similarly, #Coronavirus is trending and making people aware and  #internationalwomensday is trending during women’s day and #blackfriday is trending during the sales season etc. All these are trending hashtags. 

Some reading materials : Sprout social

OUTBOUND MARKETING

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN MARKETING

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

INBOUND MARKETING AND INBOUND MARKETING STRATEGIES

CONTENT AND FUNDAMENTAL OF CONTENT MARKETING