Transcripts
1. Realistic hashtag strategies - intro: Hi, I'm Allison missions from Alice ambitions consulting and we're gonna talk a little bit today about realistic hashtag strategies. Joined me in the next video, and I can't meet to touch a little bit more.
2. Realistic hashtag strategies: The reason that I wanted to do this training and because so many people get so overwhelmed with hashtags, that would they fail by their own metrics of using hashtags, then they actually get off social media completely. There just totally burned out. They couldn't tackle hashtags that couldn't handle it. And they just cut off social media completely. And I want to encourage you to go back to social media because social media is a really amazing way to connect with clients, to connect with collaborators, and to build community. And hashtags are just one element of it. So you need to be on social media without using hashtags, then be on social media without using hashtags. But this guide today is a short and sweet Guide to realistic hashtag strategy is where you're not spending hours per week trying to tackle hashtags. You're just doing it in a way that feels good and authentic to you and that fits in with your a minimalist and efficient social media marketing strategy. So the first thing that I am going to tell you is to not stress out about it. It's really easy to stress out on social media about exactly how you're utilizing something. Is this going to do exactly the right thing with the algorithm? Is this going to get me a ton of new followers? And the answer is sometimes it's not. Sometimes what you're doing is not going to be the best, most perfect thing, but the key is to consistently show up on social media and do so in a way that resonates with your customers. So hashtags, as I said, are just one element of that. So as you're focusing on hashtags, but most people do is use really brought hashtags like hashtag marketing or hashtag teaching hashtag learning. Hashtag, rose gold. There, all these things that people use That's in the grand scheme of things really are actually not very helpful in building their social media presence. Because even if you do get a little boost initially by using those where people are coming over and liking your post, those people are probably not going to follow you. And even if they are going to follow your, they're not going to engage with you. So if you rethink about your social media strategy and your hashtag strategy in particular, as not a tool to gain followers, but a tool to gaining engagement. Then that will help frame your whole view of when you're looking at hashtags. So if you're looking at hashtags as a tool for engagement rather than a tool to try and grab new followers. What you find is that it helps clarify what kinds of hashtags you should be doing. So the first time with hashtag that I would encourage you to look at are local hashtags. So this could be your neighborhood. So if you live in like a really big city, like you're in Park Slope, in, in, inside Brooklyn, inside New York City than doing something like hash Hyde Park Slope or even a smaller unit of your neighborhood. And then using hashtag Park Slope and then maybe using hashtag New York City or NYC, You can use these sort of different gradients and geologic, sorry, geographical hashtags. And so I live it into coma, so I would use my neighborhood is proctor tacoma OR proctor district. And then Tacoma. But Tacoma, funny. It has a bunch of different hashtags, so I would use to come out WA WA Tacoma underscore watch, took home a wash to come to Washington. So there are all sorts of different ways that your town might show up in hashtags. And so one of the key things is to actually just due to research and look at the way that people are utilizing those hashtags. So if you're in Seattle and most people are using a NO SEA versus Seattle, then you want to know that. Like the smaller your community that fewer hashtags that you might have sort of at your disposal. But you still have something, The name of your town, the name of your city, or even the name of the river, the mountain ranges in the Pacific Northwest, if you're trying to grab people from more than just your state, you can use hashtag pn, W hashtag, upper left hashtag, West Coast best codes, right? So there's all sorts of different geographical hashtags that you can use. And the reason that I push this first and foremost is that most companies really neglect their local community on social media when it's actually one of the best ways to connect with your local community. And so I encourage people to use local hashtags because even though it may not get new followers for you immediately, it reminds people of where you are located and then when people are coming into that community, either they've moved from another city and they start exploring hashtags, they can find you. So I have several clients who found to be from old hashtags that I had used for Tacoma that they had researched before they ever moved sits a coma. One of my good friends here, I found the exact same way I had looked for people in who were based in into coma and had followed her blog and then she had posted something about doing an event and I went to the event and they met her. So utilizing those local hashtags are really one of the absolute best things that you can do. If you only have a little bit of energy for hashtags, that's where I would put it. The next way to focus on hashtags is to do topical hashtags. So I actually like to combine this with the local. So instead of just doing hashtag photographer, which isn't really going to get you anything. You could do hashtag, Seattle photographer or even more specifically, Seattle wedding photographer. You could do the same thing with the jewelry that you're so hashtag jewelry isn't really going to get you anywhere. Like maybe it might get you a few likes, but most likely it's not going to lead to sales or it really even engagements or exposure. So you might want to use hashtag, handmade jewelry or eco-friendly jewelry, green jewelry, silver jewelry, crystal jewelry. And really got more specific on those topicals. And then if there's a way to mix them with local, you're gonna do really well there. So it could be hashtag Pacific Northwest artist. And by that I mean P NW artist or hashtag, West Coast artists, hashtag Kali artists. You know, there's a lot of different ways to approach this. One of the cool things that Instagram does is that when you are, when you in, when you do the search and then you put in a name or something like Tacoma. It'll say you can look for handles with Tacoma, names of businesses with tacoma OR geographical pins or hashtags. So when you click hashtags, it'll say to coma. And then at the top, if it's a big enough hashtag, it'll actually have suggestions. So it might say Tacoma was to come a wash for crust, Seattle, Graham, Gig Harbor. It might have a bunch of different things. So if you use a super esoteric. Hashtag, it might not show you suggested that the top, but if you use something that's a fairly, a fairly commonly used hashtags, then it'll give you some suggestions at the top. And one of the things I recommend that you do, and this is kind of an aside, right? We're talking about hashtags from the perspective of what do you put in your own posts, either in your comments or it within the text itself? Pro tip. I'm not sure that it matters whether you put it in the hat, in the comments or in the body of the post. It has mattered in the past, might matter in the future. But if you sit around and stressing out about whether it matters, you're gonna get burnt out. So I would just pick one and stick with it and just do whatever seems more authentic to you. So the, the, one of the things that I recommend that you do when you're doing your hashtag research is as you're going in and looking at what alternative hashtags you can be using specifically for geographical but also for topical. Look at those accounts and actually engage with those accounts and the like and comment and see who's there. And if, if you're a wedding photographer and somebody keeps popping up on like the hashtag photographer page. And then keep mentioning that they're looking for, you know, like an elopement photographer with them, that's somebody that you could create a relationship with him, reach out to. So I encourage you to not just do hashtag research for the purpose of putting them in your posts, but also research those hashtags and look into them and see who's on those hashtags to try and create stronger connections between you and other community members. One other way that you can do hash, say, research is to find the counts that are similar to yours and see what they're using. So by this, I don't mean go to your nearest competitor C what they're using and copy all of them. I don't mean that I mean, find somebody who's maybe a couple of cities away from you, who doesn't work in your area and see what kind of topical hashtags they're using and let it give you inspiration. You can also look at, I like to look at sort of adjacent businesses. So I'm a business consultant, so I'm not going to go look at the hashtags of other business consultants because I'm not trying to copy anybody. But I might go look at somebody who does business loads or who does copywriting or executive coaching and things like that and see what they're using and see if there's anything relevant or if it just gives me ideas of what I could use next. So when you're looking for hashtags to use, you can use any hashtag if it has three entries or if it has 3 million entries. But in general, what I would encourage you to do is use hashtags that have between about 10 thousand at a 100 thousand uses. And what's interesting about that is when you see that and when you start scrolling through, you're only going to see accounts that are either public or that you already follow. So people could be using those hashtags within private accounts. But the reason that you do that is if you do something as simple as jewelry, then your are going to be at the top of that page for about 0.5 seconds. If you do like hashtag California, you're going to be at the top of that list for just a couple of seconds. So because RAM is not chronological anymore and because hashtags play a lesser role than they used to in growth, I encourage you to use some smaller hashtags so that you stay up near the top of them for at least a little longer, you know, for an hour or half a day or even maybe a day. And then the other way that you can use hashtags if you want, is that you can actually create a hashtag for you or your business or your community. If they, if you feel like there isn't one for you to be using. So I haven't events that I do annually and there wasn't really a good hashtag that I could add my posts too, so I just created a new hashtag to use for it. So feel free to reach out if you have any questions, if anything, that I said was unclear or if you disagree and you want to have a chat about it. For your assignment, I want you to find five local hashtags that you could use, whether they're Uber local like your neighborhood or broader like your geographical region. And then five topical hashtags that you can use. So this is just kind of a brainstorming exercise. The nice thing about it is if you actually write it down, then you can go back to it in six months I fight and people tend to forget overtime what hashtags they're using. So having it written down in the, being able to go back to it over time is really useful.
3. Realistic hashtag strategies - closing: If you feel like you need more assistance on this, I have a workbook at my website that is one of my favorite products that I offer. I've had so many people go through it and say that it really changed their relationship with social media. If you really put the workin, it takes about anywhere from one to three hours depending on how fast civil worker you are. If you put the work in and you follow its recommendations, it will really, you'll see a difference in your social media within a couple of weeks. I'm not saying you're gonna get 1000 new followers. That's not my jam. I'm not into numbers as a measure of success. I'm much more interested in Ru, converting from followers to sales. Are people engaging with you? Are you providing helpful information to your customers? Those are all much more interesting to me, so I will drop that link below and please reach out if you have any questions. I love engaging with my students here, so have a great day. Bye.
Allison Bishins, Allison Bishins Consulting
