Why the # Is Still Just as Relevant Today
Ah… #TBT the perfect excuse to post an embarrassing picture of your sister, your dog… your sister AND your dog. We mean, what could be more impressive to a typical, mundane Thursday than that? While we find these hashtags fun to toss around in our personal lives… are they really still holding clout with today’s brand story and helping to maintain a lively audience on our social platforms? Do they really make any difference in our outreach and our profits?
Like any good analyst… let’s just say, the numbers have the answers - but before we get ahead of ourselves…
First of All…
What Does a Hashtag Even Do for Me?
Hashtags in an ad setting are less about being on trend and more about being on topic. Think of hashtags as details that help users across many platforms to find precisely what they are looking for. When someone searches or follows a hashtag, users are opened up to a world of details - details that help them discover like-minded posts and businesses that they may want to follow or check out. Your hope and your hashtag mean this - you hope that discovery is YOU.
What Statistics Were Saying at
the Height of the #
Most businesses want to know one thing that many personal accounts don’t really care so much about - what were those little hashtags doing for us anyway? If you have never dove down deep into the numbers of it all, here’s what each platform was able to do for brands across the board when hashtags were used with ads, posts, and campaigns:
Facebook: A post containing a hashtag can expect 177 more views than one that went without one
Instagram: 12% more engagements come from a post with hashtags attached
Twitter: Tweets vanish fast. Thus, hashtags can keep yours living past a tweet’s lifespan - 15 minutes - and staying relevant on this fast-paced platform
Why Hashtags are Still Relevant Today
Many companies approach digital marketing companies looking for the next big thing and while there will always be the next big thing just around the bend… hashtags are not only still relevant, but maybe they are even MORE relevant than when they first hit the scene.
Facebook’s new algorithms have caused plenty of rants across the board from well-meaning users who suddenly cannot see their grandmother’s posts in their feeds - but, of course, can see that weird guy from accounting’s every rave and rant about when McDonald’s forgets the ketchup packets in the drive-thru. While this is rather annoying, it is not only irritating for companies… it can be outright devastating.
These new algorithms (Instagram’s too) are bringing back numbers that show that a whopping 70% of your organic content is going unseen. Hashtags help to breathe new life back into your campaigns, your ads, your posts and your hard-fought time… reaching your audience and helping you to see another #TBT that is full of profit, new followers…
And embarrassing pictures of your sister.