Twitter is known for its hashtags, but are you using them to their full potential?
Twitter hashtags are a staple of the social networking platform. They’re a valuable tool that lets you reach more users, follow trends, and maybe even start a few of your own.
While Twitter isn’t the most popular social media platform in Australia, it does seem to be becoming a platform of more interest to more and more people, especially considering the recent roll out of Twitter Blue.
With a bit of groundwork, you can turn your Twitter account from a graveyard into a beehive of activity. We’ll share with you how to find the best Twitter hashtags which will help your tweets get seen by as many eyeballs as possible.
Follow these steps to find the best Twitter hashtags now.
Create a List
Like any social media platform, it’s important to have a strategy, do your research, and make sure you’re going in the right direction with a strong plan and set of goals. Who are you trying to reach? How will you reach them?
When thinking about Twitter hashtags, a great place to start is with a classic brainstorming session. You don’t need to do extensive research to have a general idea about what people might be searching for when considering your business or the products/services you offer.
Create a list of hashtags you think would be relevant to your business and your posts. Once you’ve got a list together, run through it again and see if there are any that stand out and pop these into a short list.
Competitor & Influencer Hashtags
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Now, that may be a little bit extreme, but it is important to know what your competition is up to and how they’re using Twitter to reach new users.
Take a look at some of your closest competitors. Research the hashtags they’re using. Maybe try doing a cross reference with your own list to see if there is any overlap or some hashtags that you haven’t yet considered.
When it comes to competitor hashtags, don’t blindly follow whatever the competition is doing. Rather look closely at what hashtags are being used and on what type of content. Look at the relevancy of each tag and the performance of each tweet to see which ones work best and which ones are total flops.
Then look for influencers in your niche. Most businesses should have an idea of who the key influencers are and if you don’t, now is the time to take notice! Scroll through their tweets and see what hashtags they are using and how it relates to their content.
Trending Hashtags
On Twitter itself, you can see what hashtags are trending at any given moment. This can be found on the right hand side of the page when you log in.
But did you know that you can set the trends to be relevant to specific locations as well? You can choose a number of locations, including cities and countries, and see the trending hashtags for each location. To do this, click on ‘Change’ next to Trends and then follow the on screen prompts to choose the locations you want to track.
Twitter Trends aren’t always going to be relevant for your business but if you want to get in on the trend action, and have something relevant to contribute, then this is a great way to keep on top of what’s trending and act on it.
Hashtagify
To get a high level overview of your hashtag’s potential performance, you can search for it on Hashtagify. This tool allows you to search for a potential hashtag. It then gives you the all-time top 10 hashtags related to the one you searched for, which can be useful to expand your hashtag search.
It also shows you who the top 6 influencers are for that hashtag, as well as a wall of the latest tweets using that hashtag. You can quickly see if it’s going to be relevant for your business or not.
RiteTag
A great tool to see what hashtags to use is RiteTag. You can search for your chosen keyword or phrase and then RiteTag will break down the results for you. The categories are called:
- Use these hashtags to get seen now
- Use these hashtags to get seen over time
- Do not use these hashtags, very few people are following them
This is really helpful as you might think a hashtag is great but you’ll quickly see which ones will work well and which ones are going to be a waste of your valuable tweet real estate.