Do Hashtags Matter? - Episode 8

Ty Smith0:06

Welcome to another episode of the Coinbound Marketing Show. My name is Ty Daniel Smith. With me is TJ and Kylie.

TJ0:13

Young Dumb Crypto.

Ty Smith0:14

Today we are discussing the importance of hashtags, if they are important and how important they are.

TJ0:19

Do they matter?

Ty Smith0:20

Do they matter? Do hashtags matter? All right, why don't you start us off, Kylie?

Kylie0:25

They absolutely matter. You want to get your content out there, you want people to see it, and hashtags are a way to organize content on practically an unorganizable platform, and with any other...

Ty Smith0:41

That's true. It's getting increasingly increasingly more difficult to sort content, and hashtags make that a lot easier.

TJ0:46

Yeah, that's a huge point. I think a lot of people don't even realize as the population continues to explode, more people are getting on social media every day, so these platforms are getting more and more congested, more and more content coming out. They're trying to get more and more sophisticated algorithms for serving people the type of content they want to see, and hashtags is a big part of how that organization system works.

Ty Smith1:17

Yeah, and it definitely depends on the platform also, the importance of hashtags. So, I would say LinkedIn is probably the most important for hashtags. I think you might disagree with me and say Instagram, but I do think they're probably close.

Kylie1:24

I would disagree with you as well.

Ty Smith1:26

You think Instagram is more important than LinkedIn?

Kylie1:28

I think it's more important because Instagram, I think more people have Instagram, so it's naturally is more important because it's a bigger platform and it's more used every single day.

Ty Smith1:38

That's true, but with LinkedIn, if you are if you tag something and your post starts trending, it will notify people that follow that hashtag, 'Hey, this is trending in this topic,' and it definitely can further increase the virality of a post.

TJ1:53

Yeah, so I think I think you're both right. I think what it comes down to is Instagram, you definitely to do it effectively need to have a better understanding of hashtags, how hashtags work, and how to target specific hashtags, where on LinkedIn, having the right key specific category hashtags, whether like you said, marketing, crypto marketing, or tech marketing, or like you get those right three specific ones that can then key in on that platform that would get that reaction you're talking about, I think makes a difference, whereas on Instagram, you're going to have to have, 10, 15, 12, an understanding of how to hashtag multiple things effectively outside of just tagging a certain industry or service or category or whatever that is.

Ty Smith2:38

And choosing which hashtag to use is a science in itself.

TJ2:42

It is. It's really like social SEO more than...

Ty Smith2:45

Yeah, exactly.

TJ2:46

I mean, it's it's keyword it's choosing the...

Ty Smith2:49

It's finding a keyword or a hashtag that is highly trafficked but low competition.

TJ2:54

Right, exactly. And that's that's a little more difficult to do on something like Instagram because what you have to do is like for in the industry we're in, whether it's blockchain or tech or cryptocurrency, tagging something #cryptocurrency, #bitcoin, #blockchain on Instagram, if you're an account with low following or low engagement, whether that's a few thousand or few, maybe 50 to 100 likes on a post, something like that, it's it's more or less useless for you to do that because you're almost you're never going to show up on the discover page in any of those categories because the accounts that are using those hashtags so frequently get such higher engagement, whereas if you're using, say you're posting the exact same content and you live in a specific area, like for us, we use SoCal Bitcoin or SoCal Crypto or LA Crypto, you use a specific area where you're at in in association with your industry, it helps you connect with other local people in that industry.

Ty Smith3:48

Yeah.

TJ3:49

And there may be a smaller level of people searching those hashtags, but you're more likely to be discovered because you will actually show up on the discover page. Like if you if you're trying to grow engagement in a big industry and you're trying to use the biggest, most trafficked hashtag in that industry, and you've only got 100 followers or 1,000 followers on Instagram...

Ty Smith4:13

It's not showing up.

TJ4:14

It's useless. You might as well be more targeted, more specific, and tag, if it's a thrifting thing, do, #thriftinggoodwill versus just #thrifting or #frugal, like #frugalshopping or #frugalfashion, that's what it was, yeah, that was...

Kylie4:28

Fashion.

TJ4:29

Yeah, so anyway, anything you can think of that's just more specific.

Kylie4:35

Yeah.

TJ4:36

And like you said before, it depends on the platform. So, Twitter is another one that probably doesn't matter as much.

Ty Smith4:42

Twitter, I have found the lowest difference in engagement based on on hashtags. And on Twitter, it changes the whole font also when you do a hashtag, it makes it a lot less readable.

TJ4:53

Well, it makes it blue.

Ty Smith4:54

Yeah, sorry, not font, color. But yeah, so it's it's very easy to overdo it on Twitter with hashtags, especially when you have such a small character limit, then if you're doing multiple hashtags, then you're taking up already such a high portion of your of your content that it makes it it makes it not worth organically engaging with.

TJ5:13

Well, and that's another big thing on Twitter. That's the best way I've found to use hashtags is if they work organically within the sentence you're using already, where like other platforms, you kind of like just throw hashtags at the end or just work them in, but on Twitter, if you can work it, work in Bitcoin in a sentence and use the hashtag, I think it's effective, or even, like the dollar signs to do the currency signs is another one, at least in our space, that people use a lot if you're searching like a specific, whether it was Matic or some kind of random deep altcoin, for the people that like to do that kind of thing.

Kylie5:46

Yeah.

Kylie5:47

But as far as marketing is concerned, what do you think about hashtags for marketing in general?

Ty Smith5:53

Just marketing in general. I think it's especially important for brands just starting out because they're not going to be seen. They they really need to put as many feelers out as possible to get their content seen and get a following.

TJ6:04

Well, it's also great for engaging specific audiences. We didn't even touch on that one, like how to do specific campaigns, like when you want to engage an audience and say like, 'Hey, anybody that replies with hashtag, retweet this photo,' or whatever our brand is, we can now then go click on that and see everybody who's engaged in this campaign, or adding a campaign-specific hashtag to see the effectiveness or the engagement of certain content. There's a lot of there's a lot of different ways you can incorporate hashtags effectively within your digital marketing.

Kylie6:35

So, I typed in, 'Do hashtags still matter?'

Ty Smith6:39

Okay.

Kylie6:40

And I found an article called 'Do Hashtags Still Matter?'

Ty Smith6:42

Okay, sounds relevant.

Kylie6:45

From Barry Kaufman, and he says, 'The hashtag is still the online marketer's quickest and easiest way to reach an audience.'

TJ6:53

There you go.

Kylie6:54

So, until we come up with a better solution, yeah, hashtags do still matter.

Ty Smith7:00

Okay, sounds good.

Ty Smith7:01

We are now on Slack. We have a new Slack channel, and on it, we are answering any marketing questions you have or cryptocurrency questions. So, join us at coinbound.io/joinslack. And please remember to rate, review, and recommend the podcast if you found it valuable.

TJ7:16

Yeah, and follow us on all of our social media platforms: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, anywhere you can, Coinbound. We're just @coinbound everywhere.

Ty Smith7:24

At Coinbound, yep.

TJ7:25

And then @youngdumbcrypto for me.

Kylie7:28

@cryptokylie.

Ty Smith7:29

At Ty Daniel Smith. Thanks, guys.

Kylie7:31

See you next time.