The Importance of Hashtags in PR

Hashtags are nothing new to the social media scene, but many people still don’t understand the crucial role they play. Much more than a simple metadata tag, hashtags hold the power to connect your brand’s thoughts with a much larger audience. 

Often used to promote user engagement and create value for a business on social media, hashtags have become increasingly important to brand success in recent years. What started as a fun trend has become a necessary component of content strategy. 

With millions of posts on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter, standing out can be a challenge. Hashtags enable businesses to increase their brand visibility in an easy, searchable way. Let’s dive a bit deeper into how hashtags can help your business and break down the different types of hashtags. 

The Power of Hashtags

Hashtags can be a powerful PR tool when used the right way. They enable brands to extend their reach and social media presence beyond just their followers. By joining the major trending topics across social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram, your brand can connect with a larger audience and reap the benefits of greater visibility. 

With more visibility, your brand is able to create a broader audience, which in turn will increase the likelihood of new leads for your business. By conducting hashtag research and keeping your finger on the pound symbol, you can ultimately increase profitability levels for your business.

Types of Hashtags

Before diving into the world of hashtags, it’s important to understand the key differences between the three primary types of hashtags that exist. 

Brand Specific Hashtags: These are great for creating a lasting impression with your audience. They should be unique, memorable, and representative of your brand’s personality. These types of hashtags are perfect for promotions and events, both short-term and long-term.

Campaign Hashtags: Best when used for a specific product launch or ad campaign, these types of hashtags help to promote user engagement surrounding your campaign. Campaign hashtags hold the power to increase brand awareness and generate a larger reach for your campaign. Many companies will even hold social media giveaways in association with a campaign hashtag to increase usage of the hashtag. 

Trending Hashtags: These can be tricky. Trending hashtags are the hashtags currently being used by millions of users across a social media platform. Oftentimes, trending hashtags are related to current events going on in the world. Before taking part in a trending hashtag, it’s important to ask yourself if your brand can bring value to the hashtag. If so, it can be a great tool in expanding your reach. If not, your post will likely just get swallowed up in a sea of other posts. 

Hashtags can be a tremendous PR tool in promoting user engagement, increasing brand awareness, and improving the overall success of your business. If you want your business to thrive both on and off social media, make sure you understand how to use this powerful tool to your advantage.

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Top 5 Social Media Mistakes To Avoid

In today’s day and age, social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools a brand can utilize. It can help businesses reach levels of success that they never could have reached otherwise. However, as helpful as social media can be, it can be just as detrimental. From small mistakes that leave customers with questions to big mistakes that tarnish your brand name, all social media mistakes can be avoided. 

As an award-winning global PR agency, our team at The Chi Group has learned quite a few tips and tricks on how to properly manage social media platforms. To help prevent you from making the same blunders we have seen so many times before, we have rounded up the biggest social media mistakes that you should avoid. 

Here are the top 5 social media mistakes to avoid: 

1. Failure to Engage

Social media is not meant to be a one-way street. If you’re simply posting to your social media platforms and then signing off, you’re doing it wrong for so many reasons. First of all, the algorithm on many social media platforms favors posts with more comments. The more you interact with not only your posts, but with other accounts as well, the more visibility your brand will have. 

Secondly, interaction breeds loyalty. It takes only a moment to respond to a fan comment, but it can go a long way in building relationships with your customers. 

2. Taking A One Size Fits All Approach

Various social media platforms have their own unique personalities, audiences, and content types. Posting identical posts to each of your social media platforms is ineffective and will not produce the results your brand is looking for. 

It’s important to learn who your audience is and how they communicate on each platform. By tailoring your messages to be platform-specific, you can make sure your efforts are well-received. 

3. Over-Posting or Posting at the Wrong Times

Both of these can be equally damaging to the success of your social media posts. While it’s important to post frequently, none of your followers want every other post on their feed to be from your account. The sweet spot for most social media platforms is around 1 to 2 posts per day. 

Additionally, make sure you’re making the most out of your posts by posting at the time of day when your follower engagement is the highest. This can vary depending on the age group and geographical location of the majority of your followers, so do your research. 

If the majority of your followers are based in the eastern United States and are active primarily in the afternoon, then your posts are pretty much guaranteed to flop if you’re posting at 4 AM EST. 

4. Focusing Only On Sales 

As a business, it’s expected that the majority of your content is going to be about your products and/or services. However, social media is all about connection. Your followers want to feel connected to your brand, so avoid focusing only on self-promotion.

Switch it up on occasion with thoughtful posts about recent events, relatable insights, and inside looks at the things that matter to your company. With the global pandemic leaving people around the world feeling isolated, it’s more important than ever for people to feel connected through social media. 

5. Using Lackluster Visuals

One of the most important aspects of social media is the visual component. When people are scrolling through their Instagram or Facebook feeds, you have an exceptionally small window of time to capture their attention. If you’re using lackluster stock photos or poor-quality visuals, people are going to scroll right on by. 

Make sure you have a dedicated staff member or agency partner who focuses on creating visual content that is both consistent and high-quality. Poor visual content is not only likely to inhibit your brand from gaining followers, but it reflects poorly on your business as a whole. 

By avoiding these major social media mistakes, you can achieve greater success both on social media and in your business. Work smarter, not harder! 

Museums Throw Snowballs for Brand Awareness

In the midst of the northeastern bomb cyclone snowstorm, Twitter was filled with snowball fights by museums across the East Coast. Using the #museumsnowballfight museums shared some of their iconic snow photos and fun trivia facts about winter weather. So who threw the first snowball? It was none other than the Museum of the City of New York.

This kind of campaign may seem pointless to some but when it comes to building your brand it’s a brilliant approach that won’t drain out your marketing budget. The cost merely zero the upsides are also pretty great. In fact here are the perks of witty social media banter:

Brand Awareness

You get to build awareness by reaching people who you might not normally reach. When you engage other brands in a conversation people will look, they’ll respond and even share your content.

Being Part of a Viral Campaign

Viral campaigns have the power to boost your brand. Take for example the #metoo movement, it garnered over 600K mentions on Instagram alone. The movement is still going strong even after many months.

Gain New Followers

Friendly brand banter can, in fact, help you gain new followers on social media. Your brand will have the possibility of gaining hundreds of new followers within a short amount of time. Now, who doesn’t want new followers? We all do, of course.

Build Engagement and Community

This is also one of the results of witty brand banter on social media. Brands aren’t the only ones who will get involved but so will other users who will post their own personal message while using the hashtag. Just a word of caution here, make sure you’re starting a respectable banter. One that isn’t so will cost you followers and also bring forth the critics.

The next time you want to boost your brand’s awareness, do consider some witty banter and engage other brands. Don’t be shy.