Do you want to give your content more reach? Creating fantastic content your target market will want to consume is only half the battle. Getting your content out there, getting it found and ensuring it’s clicked on (all while surrounded by millions of other links) is no mean feat. Yet there are a few simple ways to disseminate content more effectively and to expand the reach of your content marketing strategy.
Harnessing social media is a crucial way to get your content under more cursors. If you’re not yet using social media as an outlet for your content, you need to be. If you’re already tweeting, Instagramming and Facebook sharing your content, but you’re not using hashtags to expand its reach, you need to be doing that too.
Hashtags may feel faddy to some, but in reality, they do a great job of making the web more searchable and making content more discoverable. Amidst the mayhem of the digital world, and social media especially, hashtags make surfacing relevant content far simpler. If you’re keen on giving your content more social reach, here are four hashtags you need to be using.
Hashtag types you should be using
1. #YourSector
In order to use hashtags properly, your usage needs to be appropriate. Your hashtag must be relevant to the tweet, photo or message it’s defining. It also needs to be specific enough to be useful, but broad enough to be seen by a wide (relevant) audience. That’s why the very general #People is a terrible hashtag, but #Celebrities or #Scientists work much better. If you marketing Human Resources, for example, #HR is your “sector”. Try using tools like hashtagify.me to find the most searched-for tags relevant to your industry.
2. #GettingSpecific
Once you’ve found the best, relevant “sector”-defining tag out there, it can also help to get more specific. This means general searchers will be able to stumble across your content, while people looking for exactly what you have to offer will find you fast!
If you’ve created an infographic of seasonal jam recipes, you might want to use a broad tag such as #Recipes and #Food (as explained above). But to get specific, you might also want to use tags like #Jam, #Fruit and #Seasonal. This will help your content to get found by the right people.
3. #DoingYou
Creating a hashtag which clearly identifies you as a brand on social media is another essential for content marketing via social media, especially if you’re keen to make the most of user-generated content created by users piggybacking on your tag. Choose a hashtag which is easy to remember, incorporates your brand name and which avoids any awkward spellings (a la Susan Boyle’s album launch). This will make it easy for users to specifically track down your content on social media, you can also use the tag for competitions and events.
For example, a business named Kate’s Chocolates could choose a hashtag such as #kateschocolates, #kateschoc, #chocolatebykate, #choccykate or any permutation based on what your audience will respond to best.
4. #TheTrend
While jumping onto a trending hashtag with a piece of irrelevant content won’t win you any fans, friends or follows, creating relevant content responsively and tagging it with a trending hashtag is a great way to get more views and clicks. Never incorporate hashtags which refer to sad or negative news, but checking “Trends” for hashtags like #WednesdayWisdom, #TBT and more responsive tags relating to recent news and developments in your industry will help make your content more discoverable.
These four different “types” of hashtag will help you to get your content in front of the widest possible social audience, helping you to boost click-throughs, maximise shares and squeeze the maximum juice from your content marketing strategy.
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