Hello, and welcome to the Theory of Marketing Relativity Podcast. I'm Jess Burton, a Marketing Specialist here at Epic Marketing Consultants Corporation. Let's talk all things marketing and merchandising with our Epic team. On this week's podcast, I'm joined by Brooke Miles. She is a Social Media Strategist and a trainer that is very close to Epic. Thank you for joining me today, Brooke.
Brooke:Oh, thank you. It's my pleasure.
Jess:I'm so glad that I can have you here to talk about hashtags.
Brooke:Yes, there's so much to talk about.
Jess:There is and I feel like hashtags are kind of like a, almost like a secondary thing when it comes to social media. Like once you break into social media, and you kind of like have set yourself up to start, then you start noticing, like, why is everybody putting, as my dad says, why is everybody putting pound signs in front of words?
Brooke:Yes.
Jess:Um, and then I had to explain to him that that is a hashtag now. Um, not just a pound sign, and that there's a reason behind it.
Brooke:Yes, yes. Definitely.
Jess:Um, so, let's talk about hashtags and kind of what they mean for social media.
Brooke:Ok great. So, anytime you put a hashtag in front of a word what you're doing is you're signaling to the social media Yeah, I think the hashtags especially because most of the platform that you're writting your post in, that this is almost like a keyword. Okay, that's the kind of like the best way to describe it. So think of think of social media hashtags as like Google keywords, if you were to do like Google AdWords, or something like that, that nature. Um, so because you want your posts to be found on numerous social media platforms, but not all hashtags are used as of category. So in other words, let's say you have the hashtag up this is a general example, et's say the hashtag digital arketing at the end of a post r something of that nature. hat will happen is, there are ots of other posts out there hat have a hashtag digital arketing and if someone in s meone wants to see what are a l the posts that have hashtag d gital marketing, they can a tually follow the hashtag, or j st click on the hashtag, just t see what posts have come up. o now, they're actually creating a user experience for themselves, where they're actually seeing posts based on a certain category. So again, it really helps with discoverability, you know, with with just being found in searches when you use when you se hashtags. platforms, not all of them, most of them are clickable. Um, I fell into like a black hole the other day on like LinkedIn, clicking on hashtags, trying to work on a hashtag strategy for some for one of our clients. I just remember all of a sudden, I'm like, wait a minute, where am I? That was because you get it because it populates all the relevant content to that hashtag like you said. Yes.
Jess:Um, so let's talk about hashtags strategies.
Brooke:Okay. All right. So, go ahead.
Jess:I always tell people, it's not about just like throwing stuff on the wall and seeing what sticks. You can actually plan out a strategy when it comes to your hashtags.
Brooke:Yes, yes. And I and I do want to kind of preface this with, you know, when you have all these hashtags you want to use depending on your posts. What I do recommend is as you develop the strategy to kind of have like a storehouse of these, whether it is in a Microsoft Word document, or you use a program like text expander, where you write a little thing and all the text populates, whatever it is, or on your phone. If you do a lot of social media on your phone, or some people do you know how they're like text replacement or text shortcuts that every phone has, you can actually put hashtags in there. So basically, if you're, as you're creating the strategy, have your hashtags in one spot, so you can easily pull them. And you're not having to do hashtag word, hashtag word, hashtag word, hashtag word, every single time you do a post because that can get really, really cumbersome. Okay, so keeping that in mind with your hashtag strategy in terms of which, which hashtags are you're going to, are you going to use that we will talk about I know we're going to talk about which platforms you should use them for, and how many and all that too. But just overall, the biggest thing is who are you trying to reach? You know, um you know, what are the main industries that you are in and are there certain topics or you know, areas that you tend to cover all the time with your posts. And I will tell you, for example, a lot of my posts are about social media. So I have, you know, hashtag social media marketing, hashtag social media marketing tips, etc, etc, like a whole bunch of those. Um, but you know, once in a while I do a post that might be about, let's say copywriting, so I have hashtags related to copywriting. And so actually, when I'm organizing my hashtags into what I'm going to use, which hashtags, I'm going to plop onto which posts, I have them organized, actually in Microsoft Word. Well, there I've been in different ways depending on how, how my day is going. But I have a Microsoft Word document that actually has paragraphs, like one paragraph is just a string of social media related hashtags, that that I found that I took 20 minutes out of my life to research, I don't really have to do it too much again. One just on, you know, copywriting. When we get back to normal world, where we're doing a lot of in person networking, I have a whole bunch of networking hashtags, I have hashtags just on entrepreneurship. And then and this is really important if you are if you do a lot of most of your marketing is local, have local hashtags. So for example, you know, here in Delaware, my company's Delaware shout out, you know, I do a lot of local marketing. So I have there are numerous Delaware related popular Delaware related hashtags that I use, such as hashtag, you know, Delaware, hashtag net DE you know, Delegram, and also IG Delaware, popular on Instagram. So basically, I have all those, and then I have one specifically for Wilmington, Delaware and Newark, Delaware so it's, you know, it does take time to put it together. But once you have it, you can just kind of cut and paste what you need. Because what I also find is that, you know, let's say I do a post that's about digital marketing, well, you know, I'm competing against digital marketing posts around you know, the world basically. But um, you know, if I also include, you know, geographic hashtags, like hashtag Delaware, hashtag Wilmington, DE, you know, or hashtag Newark, Delaware, or whatever it is, then at least I'll also be found by people locally, and some of those may be business owners. So think about that, if you are marketing locally, definitely take advantage of local hashtags. I find that they are incredibly helpful and then also, another strategy you just want to think about too, is how you're going to display the hashtags. Except for Twitter, which I'm sure we'll get into more specifics. In general, it's better to have the hashtags kind of at the very end of your post it with some line breaks at the end of the post, or, you know, you can also like on Instagram, for example, put the hashtags in a comment. But you don't want hashtags look like clutter, they look like a bunch of hiccups, they look messy, you know, so you don't want them cluttering up the juicy content that you have in your main caption, you just want to kind of put separately, you don't people necessarily, like human beings don't really necessarily need to see the hashtags. It's just that the social media site that you're using needs to see the hashtags so that they can categorize and hopefully, you know, have that post show up in a in a search. So don't worry about humanize so much as social media ties.
Jess:That is such a good point. I think, as marketers, we sometimes forget that your marketing the profiles. The platforms are like the middleman, you have to market to the middleman to get to your end goal of your end user. So yes, there are times I look at something on Facebook or I look at something there's someone on LinkedIn that I know that puts hashtags like in their LinkedIn copy.
Brooke:It's probably the same person that we're looking at. I know who, I think I know who you're talking about.
Jess:And every time I scroll by and I'm like, ooh, like, it makes me like shudder because I'm like, I don't even want to read that. Um, but yeah, it is very it does clutter is such a ood description, especially, I specially think about it on nstagram, sometimes when people on't add all of the spaces, or ny of the, like bullet points r whatever between or they on't put the hashtags in the omments, and they just like, ut a bunch of hashtags. And you' e like, this is very distractin , it reminds me of all the lik , chachis in my grandma's like hina closet, like they're all ust there. But yeah, I think hose are some great points, specially with saving all your ashtags somewhere in a document n like I have, and like you aid, depends on who the client s. I have some of them, like aved in their content calendars o that I can just pull them as 'm doing their content. I have ome saved in a Word doc, um, I ave some saved on my phone ecause you never know. But eah, it definitely take the 20 minutes to do some research an find the global, the local, t e especially the local, e pecially if you're local, t ose hashtags. Because it's d finitely important to building your strategy. Um, so let's ch t about the different platform because they're all very uni ue in how they use hashtags. nd I know that like, LinkedIn and Facebook are kind of like t e newcomers to like the hasht g. So let's start, let's start, here do you would you like to st rt?
Brooke:Let's start with Facebook. Okay, so there are a lot of people putting hashtags in their Facebook posts, sometimes I think it's because they're writing a post on Instagram and then sharing it directly to Facebook. I think that's a lot of times why that happens. The the studies I keep on seeing the majority of the studies, I keep on seeing, say that the ideal number of hashtags on a Facebook post is zero, okay? Like, if you put hashtags there are gonna be couple of exceptions here, oka . Or at least one I could thi k of that I'll mention, ut, you know, when you put hasht gs in a Facebook post, it just, gain, it just adds to the clutt r or, you know, that type of t ing. Um, the thing is on Facebo k, and you really want to think about the user experien e, okay, why do people go on Fa ebook? They go on Facebook to see what their long lost, yo know, ex boyfriend is doing no , me, I don't do that but I'm j st saying, you know, one could okay, or, you know, or what t eir long lost cousin is doing r, you know, it's just, you now, they're, they're basically ust checking out what people are doing. Okay. They're not going n saying, you know, I wonder wha 's going on with hashtag di ital marketing. They're no , you know, they're just peopl aren't doing that. So, so the e isn't a reason for hashtags. ow maybe down the road that ill change and use of behavorial change but right now like, ou know, people are, it's just p ople on social that Facebook is so social, that, you know, you j st have to kind of respect tha . However, I will say, let's ay there is I don't know like, et's say, it's a hashtag Interna ional Women's Day 2 21. Okay, and I don't I guess t ere's an internationalist 2021 I don't know, if I'm just s ying like, if there's like a big event, you know, that has a branded hashtag, and you wa t to contribute to that. You kno , that is something that peop e might search for, or, you k ow, if you're part of an event o like, you know, be sure to, ou know, write a post about thi and use blah, blah, blah, ha htag and you'll be entere into a draw, you know, then bviously, do the hashtag. B t that has a very specific pur ose. But otherwise, I fe l like I, I'm gonna say this i gonna sound so obnoxious and I don't mean it this way but, I feel like a lot of times peop e are putting hashtags in becau e they think it just looks cool But that's not why you put ha htags in. So too, it's unc ol to put them in Facebook. Agai , I know though, there are a co ple sites out there that d sagree with that, but for t e most part right now, no, no, or for Facebook. Moving up the l ne.
Jess:So I will tell you, I we've had in case this helps you. Yeah, we've had a couple clients who have seen people who have been like, why are they putting hashtags on Facebook? What is this? Like, why aren't we doing hashtags? And we like, luckily, like, Nancy is very data driven. Yes, there's no way to track Facebook hashtags. There's no like, like, when we give them a report on their Instagram metrics, hashtag usage is in there. Because we can track how new the hashtag is how popular is. But when they're like, when they ask us, sometimes they'll be like, can we try using hashtags? We give them the same thing. I'm like, well, if we want to have a contest, so you can track contest entries that's great. I know at one point and I haven't seen it lately but, I know at one point Facebook was doing like challenges. So like, for a brief moment of time, it was like your friend has participated in the hashtag chug a gallon of water challenge. And it like put a banner on it because they use that hashtag. I haven't seen that lately. But again, the same thing. Like I tell people all the time, I'm like, there's no way for us to track the specific data coming in from a hashtag like there is on Instagram. Because I think that's what they because we tell them all the time that like, Facebook and Instagram are connected so sometimes I think that they think that.
Brooke:Yeah, or go no they're still separate. So you know, it's yeah, so, um alright, so moving, moving along. The next would be Twitter and, you know, first of all, there is a 280 character limit on a tweet but the sweet spot for Twitter is basically two hashtags. It just from it, because people do do searches on Twitter, you know, based on hashtags, and because there is a character limit, that is definitely the the one social media program that I use regularly that I would say that hashtags are okay in the middle of the sentence. Because you know, it's if you're using the word you know, hashtag social media, like hashtag social media and you say social media in the middle of the sentence, just put hashtag social media and it'll send so um but more than two seems to be spammy. If you use fewer than two, it may not be as effective. So, if you can do two do two for Twitter. LinkedIn, three to five, three to five is ideal but, you want to put it again at the at the end. You know, I, I've done a lot of hashtag research I've done, I can usually think of like three good hashtags for particular post. I, it's hard for me to get to five really good ones but I, you know, I typically. Oh, gosh, I just did LinkedIn post like, just like, a few minutes before this, I forgot to put hashtags have to go back and put hashtags. Oh, man, I was like, because I was in a rush. Okay, so anyway, I'm glad that it will be fixed before people hear this, you know, recording. So, and it's okay to keep that in, by the way so what I just said, seriously, mistakes are good. Um, but yes, three to five is really good for LinkedIn. For Pinterest, I'm not as much of a Pinterest person but no more than 20 per pin seems to be the the rule there. For Instagram, you can have up to 30 hashtags, and really, as close to 30 as you can get. But, I will tell you you know, one thing to keep in mind, and you know, what I should have mentioned this with the hashtag strategy is you want to choose, you know, popular hashtags, but you don't want them to be so popular that there's so much competition because everyone is using them. So, I know I gave the example of hashtag social media, but that is used so so much, but if it were like, hashtag, you know, social media marketing tips, okay, fewer people are using that. So you know, as you're choosing how and so you might be tempted to just throw in any hashtag you can on Instagram to get up to the 30. And that's where you're probably most tempted just to use really generic ones. Or I've seen realtors use hashtag real estate, I'm like, okay, you know, you're probably marketing locally here so, maybe should be hashtag real estate Delaware or something of that nature. But, the key is you want to still be picky with your hashtags, even if you have a whole bunch of them that you can add. So, so anyway, yeah, those are those are the platforms right there. And, you know, I will tell you, I am not a TikTok user, and there is a huge character limit to two hashtags. Technically, there's no limit to hashtags, but you still have to stay within the character limit so, you know, but we're not really doing TikTok with our clients right now. So, I'm really sticking more with the business, the platforms that we're using most, you know, for our business minds.
Jess:Yeah, I think and I, I'm a big, like, everyone always asked, like, what's your favorite platform? And Instagram is hands down, probably one of my favorite social media platforms. And with that, like a lot of people have moved from TikTok over to like reels on Instagram. And I know that, um, it's kind of like the same thought process that like, you can use as many hashtags as you want on reels, but you don't want again, you don't want to use like 100. That's insanity you'll probably end up not getting any content, because Instagram will be like, what is happening here?
Brooke:Oh, one thing I should mention about Instagram stories, by the way, if you're doing hashtags with Instagram stories, then there is a 10, there is a 10 hashtag limit for that. But obviously, a hashtag can really clutter up a story, you know, just because the visuals. But, some ideas are, first of all, you can just make the hashtags really, really small on it, or you can have a semi transparent background. Or what some people do is they make the hashtags really, really small, and then they put like a big emoji over it. So, people aren't so in other words, the viewer isn't seeing the hashtags but again, Instagram is seeing the hashtags. So, those are just some ways to again, have them like you to your point, the middleman, see the hashtags, whereas the actual human beings don't necessarily need to see it.
Jess:I've definitely done it where I've like, changed the font color to match, like someone's shirt and like hidden it on someone's like, shirt sleeve.
Brooke:That's so funny.
Jess:Just because it's like, if it's a picture, you're like, where am I going to put this that like? So, I've definitel done the thing where you lik color match it to like something in the image and then just like hide it in the sky in a cloud or something. Um, well, Brooke, thank you so much for giving us a amazing rundown on hashtags. If people want to connect with you, where can they find you?
Brooke:Gotcha. Well, I'm pretty much everywhere on social media. But I will tell you, what has been really growing and thriving is my YouTube channel where I have like a zillion, well not a zillion about 70 free tutorials on different aspects that I will tell you. So, if you go on YouTube and go to Delaware shoutout shoutout as one word by the way, you'll find me there. But, most of my videos are about Facebook and LinkedIn because those are the ones I'm most passionate about. But there are a lot of things that I teach there can apply to, you know, any social media site. And then you know, my websites DEshoutout.com but, go on YouTube. More fun.
Jess:Go subscribe. Um, have you hit any benchmarks in your YouTube subscribers lately?
Brooke:I did, I recently hit 1,000 so that's really, that's super cool I'm really happy about 1,000 subscribers. Um and it's, it's I've just been having I just been having a lot of fun with it um video was something I've always been really scared about. Um and, but, you know, you just, it's video has been absolutely amazing throughout this pandemic, because I really had to just, I couldn't just, you know, hide behind beautifully crafted, you know, single image posts or, you know, stuff like that I had to, you know, just have more of an impact. Especially, towards the pandemic when you know, networking, you know, you couldn't do in person networking anymore and make an impact that way. And it's it's done wonders for my marketing so I you know, we're not talking about hashtags here. But I do recommend video, even if you're uncomfortable with you're not sure to get started. Just get started because once you dip your toe into it, it'll motivate you to keep on trying and work at it. So, and it's been a process for me as well.
Jess:Love it. That's some great advice. Well, thank you for joining us, and hopefully we can have you back again sometime soon.
Brooke:I would love that. Thank you.
Jess:Thank you. Thank you all for tuning in this week. We hope this theory is relative to your marketing needs. Make sure you subscribe to get notified of our latest episodes.