Marketing With Facebook Hashtags

If your business isn’t using Facebook hashtags you might want to give it some serious thought.

Facebook, though late to the game, is now using hashtags placed in front of a word or phrase to turn it into a clickable link. Clicking on the link displays public posts using the same hashtag. Why is this important? How can it benefit your business?
As a hashtag gains popularity, its reach is also growing, putting your business in front of people who may not otherwise see your posts. Businesses with a specific target community can use hashtags to draw people into a conversation and encourage further interaction (likes, shares, lead capture, etc.).

If you have an #event or #contest, promote it using a Facebook hashtag. Be sure to comply with Facebook contest promotional rules concerning hashtag use.
When launching a new product or service, brand it with a hashtag and use that branding in every post to help it gain legs. Start conversations around the branding, keeping it relevant to your audience to promote sharing. Avoid blatantly promotional, branded posts, as people don’t often share an obvious ad.
For those of you already using hashtags on Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google+; Facebook hashtags are basically more of the same. It’s a great way to increase exposure for your videos and as for convenience, hashtags let you post content over several social media platforms quickly and easily. But be careful to moderate duplicate posts across your social channels. People have no incentive to follow your Facebook feed if they can see the same post on Twitter.

Remember:
All Facebook posts are shared with friends based on your privacy settings. Adding a hashtag will not make the post public.
Hashtags must be written as a single word (ex. #CovideoBlog)
Hashtags are not case sensitive. (ex. #CovideoBlog and #covideoblog, will show the same results.)
You can make up any hashtags you want but keep them short and simple, relevant to your industry and easy to understand.
Search for your hashtag on social sites to see if anyone else is already using it for a purpose at odds with your company messaging.
Use infrequently at first and check your Facebook Reach and Engagement numbers to gauge effectiveness.
Are you ready to try Facebook hashtags? Tell us about your experience!
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