Understanding the importance of hashtags in the context of using it on Instagram

The advent of the social media can be considered to be a revolution as it has brought with it a new brand of English language that may appear to be cryptic to many. Hashtags use words arranged in some ways that apparently does not make sense but actually means a lot to those who are familiar with it. It has also changed the way searches are done on the internet. While the principle of searching has not changed, there is quite a bit of difference in the way searches have to be done on the social media.

Change the way you search

For traditional search engines, the norm is to key in a sentence or phrase, worded suitably to look for the target topic or content. When searching on the social media platform, all that you have to do for searching is to apply the hashtag with appropriate words to reach to the content, topic or people that you are looking for. Whether it is in on Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Pinterest or any other social media – the rule is the same.

When you are serious about effectively using Instagram for business and want to develop a band of real Instagram followers, it is important to understand how hashtags can make life easy for you on the social media. How hashtags can amplify your visibility on Instagram and how to make it work for you have been discussed in this article.

Hashtags – the explanation

Hashtags as we all know is a combination of a symbol (#) followed by a word, series of words or acronym without spaces. Like #Inbound Marketing is a hash word that you can create for your use. Similarly, #Icecream Lovers could be another hashtag. When browsing the social media you will come across such hashtags that are spread all over the social media posts. These can be positioned according to your liking on the posts.

Hashtags are unique in its ability to tie up all public conversations contributed by various users and make it available in a single stream. To locate any conversation, you have three options – to click on the hashtag, search for a hashtag or use a monitoring tool that can be obtained from a third party. However, the post that you are searching for must be available in the public domain. The beauty of hashtags is that it works on smartphones with the same consistency.

It is easy to use on Instagram

Although hashtags work in the same way across different platforms of the social media, from the usability perspective Instagram users find it more convenient. Conversations of different users are bunched together by means of hashtags without the users being connected to one another.

If multiple users are talking about the same topic that is assigned with a specific hashtag all posts will be captured in the same stream. The hashtag stream on Instagram is much more user friendly than that you find on Twitter and Facebook. The stream of content that is presented allows users either to look for top posts, most recent posts or even browse through the related posts.  

Creating hashtags on Instagram

If you are wondering what skills are needed to create hashtags that are appropriate for the post where it is to be used, then you need not worry at all. The Instagram system will guide you through to select the hashtag of your choice. If you are finding it difficult to coin the words or phrase for hashtags for your new post, you can get leads from the system as soon as you enter #.

The system will prompt you with a few options of hashtags that you can choose from. It is quite similar to what you experience when you create a user name for a new Email account. You can either go with the recommendation or can try out some other combination after taking a cue from it.

Registering hashtags

Hashtags cannot be owned but you can get hashtags registered if you like. There are some websites like twubs and hashtags where you can get hashtags registered. Registering hashtags cannot prevent the use of hashtags by others, but if any of these are related to some critical issues linked to trademark or other promotional matters, it can help to stake your claim for it. Now, let us see how hashtags can help the cause of business.

Hashtags promote engagement

Hashtags has the immense power of assimilating like-minded people under one umbrella. This gives tremendous opportunity for creating widespread engagement with people who could contribute favourably to make your business grow. Just at a click you can be directed to hundreds of potential customers who could become your loyal customers some day.

Keep an eye on your competitors with hashtags

Since hashtags collate posts cutting across industry segments, it throws open what your competitors are talking about. You can also gauge the media reaction on some specific topic or could come to know what kind of impression people are having about your product. Doing research about the market and monitoring competitors have both become quite easy with hashtags. It also facilitates gauging of audience sentiment that can be useful for re-positioning your marketing strategy.

Hold a conference whenever you want

If you are eager to bring to the table a topic that needs brainstorming, hashtags provide the scope of arranging for a wide scale discussion. The greatest contribution of hashtags is in streamlining conversation and creating the most popular topics that can add much value to business. It has become very easy to identify topics and participate in discussions that can be beneficial for business. Hashtag brings along with it a great amount of transparency.

Conclusion

The powers of hashtag can be understood if we consider that the participation in a conference was multiplied by at least 25 times over and above the physical attendance that was recorded. This is a direct impact of the engagement that hashtags are able to create. The scope of including more and more people into your stream of thought has made hashtags really unique for business.