Hashtags are either loved or hated. Some marketers and social media users season every single post with multiple hashtags while others avoid them.
It is an open secret that webmasters and affiliate marketers appreciate organic traffic greatly and strive to get as many organic followers on social media as possible. And hashtags can help to carry out the task.
A single hashtag in your post contributes to 12.6% higher engagement compared to posts with no hashtags. Why are hashtags so influential? How to get maximum benefits of using hashtags in affiliate marketing? This is our topic for today and off we go.
As you should be well aware, a hashtag is a word or a phrase with a “#” symbol. In fact, hashtags help to categorize posts into groups based on a topic that might be interesting for a specific audience. Hashtags simplify the searching process for users and help you make content more explicit and visible to a wider audience. In other words, hashtags help with somewhat sorting and filtering content.
For instance, if you are interested in luxury cars, you can search for #luxurycars, so you will find all recent posts tagged for luxury cars. Of course, the results depend on whether people used the hashtag #luxurycars appropriately. Besides, the list of results won’t include relevant posts without the hashtag.
Actually, anyone can create a hashtag. However, this means there are tons of irrelevant hashtags. And vice versa, there are popular, trending hashtags. Trends can be long-term, short-term, and seasonal.
To be noticeable and visible, you should adapt hashtags to the needs of your target audience. If you use #marketing you will target a much broader audience than when you use #affiliatemarketing. So you need to be accurate and precise with hashtags.
Hashtags in Affiliate Marketing
Being an affiliate marketer you cannot underestimate the value of proper planning and managing social media campaigns. Right hashtags can significantly increase your social media presence; yet searching for a good hashtag and tracking the results of using some specific hashtags might be challenging without tracking tools that provide you with detailed analytics.
However, you can discover trending hashtags and monitor hashtag performance using hashtag tracking tools.
Hashtag tracking tools are useful for:
- Measuring the social media reach of your campaign
- Measuring social media engagement
- Measuring performance and results of your marketing campaign
- Searching for top influencers who use your hashtag
- Searching for trending hashtags and getting hashtag suggestions.
Speaking about hashtag tracking tools there are multiple instruments available out there, including:
- SocialAlert. One of the most popular hashtag tracking tools that provide analytical reports and performance monitoring and allows tracking various metrics, such as reach, impressions, influencers, etc. SocialAlert hashtag research instrument helps to expand your reach on popular social media platforms.
- Brand24. The tool provides real-time hashtag performance monitoring on Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, and TikTok. Brand24 ensures detailed hashtag analytics based on many metrics, including the volume of engagement, the volume of mentions, social media reach, other popular hashtags, etc.
- RiteTag. A very popular hashtag tracking tool that allows searching for currently trending hashtags and provides detailed statistics for every hashtag you use.
- Hashtags.org. This is a practical tool for discovering the top trending hashtags in various industries. The instrument also provides simple analytics.
You may find many other online instruments for hashtag tracking with various features.
What Types of Hashtags to Use for Affiliate Marketing Campaigns
There is no need to add tons of hashtags. Yet, some hashtags are influential, for example:
- Branded hashtags. This is a hashtag created for your brand. Not always a branded hashtag consists of a brand name; sometimes it is a slogan: for example, Nike uses #JustDoIt, and Coca-Cola deploys #shareacoke. Tracking such a branded hashtag you may discover the reach of your brand.
- Trending hashtags. These are hashtags that are widely used during a specific period. Trending hashtags can be seasonal, for example, #Christmas is trending yearly around Christmas time.
- Campaign hashtags. These hashtags are created while launching a new product or a new campaign.
- Content hashtags. This type of hashtag highlights the topic and helps users find the required content.
Definitely, we cannot ignore the fact that 71% of social media users use hashtags for both making their own posts visible and discovering new content. Around 90% of large international brands use in their posts 7 or fewer hashtags out of the allowed 30.
What is the golden number for you?
Not necessarily you should just follow the number used by large brands, you’d better rely on testing, tracking, and analysis. Try using different hashtags and analyze such metrics as reach and engagement with the help of hashtag tracking tools. This way, you will discover the best-performing hashtags for your campaign or brand.
Note: When you consider creating a new hashtag, take this task seriously as there are examples of unsuccessful hashtags: #susanalbumparty (by singer Susan Boyle), #RIMJobs (by Research in Motion), #McDStories (by McDonald’s, when many stories shared by users were about a negative experience with the company).
How many hashtags do you usually use for your posts?
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Conclusion
As you see, #hashtags are not useless; on the contrary, they can play a crucial role. Proper hashtag usage might help with expanding the reach and make your campaign, brand, or product more discoverable and noticeable for people who use hashtags to search for specific content. Thus, hashtags help to drive more traffic on social media platforms. And traffic is something we are looking for, isn’t it?
