Hashtags: Enabling Trending and Viral Contents

In today’s world of social media, almost everyone uses hashtags when posting on digital platforms. Especially if the idea of the content is intended to trend and go viral.

The hashtag feature, symbolized by #, was first developed by Twitter. The intention was to index keywords in order to create a simpler experience for users to keep up with topics that are only relevant to their interests. These days, hashtags can be used on most social media platforms, but are most popular on Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, and TikTok. A post labeled with a hashtag helps people to easily identify posts with identical themes.

When using social media, users can easily become overwhelmed with lots of information. Using hashtags can filter out all the unnecessary and irrelevant digital traffic and can only concentrate on the information the users are truly interested in. The easiest approach to filtering out irrelevant content from the constant stream of information shared on social media is to use hashtags.

 

How Are Hashtags Helpful?

Hashtags make social media surfing easier and less time-consuming by allowing users to find relevant and specific information. By searching for trending hashtags, social media users are guaranteed to find what they are looking for. Hashtags are usually used to create trending content on a wide range of themes, including business promotions, brand discussions, breaking news, trending events, personal opinions, gratitude tweets, social activism, spreading awareness, and many more.

Furthermore, hashtags may be used for almost any kind of content, and they provide a terrific way to connect people who share interests. Hashtags assist in reaching more people who are interested in specific content by helping them locate such posts. By using popular phrases associated with the content users are looking for, social media posts can be created with a hashtag that is appropriately compatible with users’ interests.

Hashtags can also be used to spark a discussion or bring attention to a subject matter. This is usually used when social media influencers are intending to create awareness about a topic.  As a result, the hashtags used can boost interaction with social media followers. They allow followers to join a social discussion or a networking site in order to demand actions and changes. Apart from that, these hashtags can make posts prominent in online forums. The greater the interaction of followers, the greater chance of gaining new followers, likes, shares, and comments.

On top of that, businesses can also use hashtags to create brand hashtags using their company’s name. This can allow them to promote their products and services along with creating a great opportunity in allowing their social media followers to participate in brand discussions. Besides, companies can use hashtags to obtain information on their competitors. Analyzing the hashtags of their rivals can enable them to understand their common target audience and the interaction strategy of their competitors.

Businesses and social media influencers can benefit most from efficiently using hashtags since it helps them to reach their target audiences and connect consistently. Hashtags can be used to describe messages, services, and goods either in a generalized or a specific manner. With the consistent use of hashtags, audience can increase and popularity can grow.

 

Creating Effective Hashtags

How can we make our hashtags popular? It has always been said that consistency is the key to going viral. Additionally, it is important to pay attention when creating a social media post. According to Twitter, avoiding the overuse of hashtags while posting is important, as hashtags can appear repulsive when they have a crowded appearance. Brief posts with one to three hashtags will do the trick.

When posting hashtags, we should always verify that our accounts are public. Otherwise, non-followers won’t be able to view the hashtag phrase we posted. Apart from that, hashtag phrases should always be brief and catchy. 

Even after creating a catchy hashtag and maintaining a perfect consistency of posting, how can we know if we are doing great? Every now and then, we should remember to check our analytics. In doing so, we can easily know which hashtags are helping or hindering our posts. 

Keeping track of which hashtags were effective in previous posts and analyzing which posts were the most popular. If the most popular posts included a similar pattern of hashtags, it would be great to include these hashtags in future posts as well. If there is no or low audience traffic, there is no point in using that hashtag in future posts.

 

Photo: REDPIXELPL/Shutterstock

 


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