CLIENTS ASK: Are hashtags still relevant?

Hashtags and a hashtag strategy have always been a staple in social media posts, especially on platforms like Instagram. They serve as a way to categorize content, increase discoverability, and engage with a wider audience. However, with the ever-evolving landscape of social media, it is worth exploring whether hashtags are still relevant in today's digital age.

Are hashtags STILL IMPORTANT?

The short answer is yes! Hashtags remain important because they facilitate content discovery. When users search for a specific hashtag, they can find related posts and accounts. Hashtags act as a gateway to connect users with similar interests and enable them to explore new content. This is particularly important on platforms like Instagram, where the use of hashtags can significantly impact post visibility and reach. By including relevant hashtags in your Instagram posts, you increase the chances of reaching a larger audience and gaining more engagement.

Secondly, hashtags provide a way for brands and individuals to build a community and engage with their target audience. Creating a hashtag specific to a campaign, event, or brand can encourage user-generated content and foster a sense of belonging among followers. For instance, brands often encourage their customers to share photos or experiences using a branded hashtag. This user-generated content not only strengthens the brand's relationship with its audience but also acts as social proof, boosting credibility and trust.

Hashtags Influence Views and Engagement

Hashtags play a crucial role in tracking and measuring social media campaigns. By using unique hashtags for specific marketing initiatives, businesses can analyze the success of their campaigns and gauge the level of audience engagement. This data allows them to refine their strategies and optimize future marketing efforts. Hashtags also enable social media managers to monitor conversations surrounding their brand, industry, or competitors, gaining valuable insights and staying abreast of trends.

It is essential to acknowledge that the effectiveness of hashtags can vary based on platform and audience. While hashtags have significant relevance on Instagram, they might not carry the same weight on other platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn. Each platform has its own algorithm and user behavior, and it's crucial to tailor hashtag usage accordingly.

The quality and relevance of the hashtags used are essential. Overloading posts with generic or unrelated hashtags can dilute the message and attract spammy engagement. It's important to conduct research and choose hashtags that are specific, relevant, and aligned with the content and target audience.

The bottom Line

In our experience and research, hashtags and a well-thought-out hashtag strategy do continue to be relevant in social media posts, especially on Instagram. They aid in content discovery, community building, and campaign tracking. However, it is crucial to adapt hashtag usage to each platform and audience and ensure the hashtags chosen are of high quality and relevance. By incorporating a strategic approach to hashtags, brands can leverage their social media presence to connect with their target audience, increase visibility, and drive engagement. In other words, hashtags still work and we encourage you to not be afraid to get creative and experiment with new trending hashtags – you never know what kind of results you may see!

If you need help with hashtag research, creating a hashtag strategy that works with your small business, or anything else to help assist with your brand’s social media marketing efforts, reach out today!

CLIENTS ASK: What’s the difference between Stories, Reels, and IGTV?

Instagram is a savvy app with an ever-changing algorithm, but it’s the social platform with the highest engagement, so it’s crucial to take advantage of the many features. If you aren’t making content on Instagram, you might as well throw your engagement metrics out the window.

Visually based, this app relies on well made, creative content to keep consumers attention and businesses to utilize their best Call To Actions (CTA) for each feature. Between Stories, Reels, and IGTV, how do you know which one would be most beneficial for you and your social media marketing?

Well, that’s what Take Flight is here for, to help you meet your goals and understand what makes the most sense for your business. Instagram’s metrics are the most important to understand your true engagement to conversion rates, so we created a quick guide to each individual feature.

Why Use Instagram Stories?

Instagram launched Instagram Stories in 2016 after their initial app launch in 2010. The short form content is all about brief, attention-grabbing minimal advertisements, whether that means dynamic images or animated videos. They last for a total of 5 seconds, so you can always do multiple slides on a story, but the kick is that the story will only last for a limited time—24 hours. So, it’s important to use stories as a brand to showcase specific products, services, or to promote brand awareness.

While you can’t give consumers an in depth look into your company, you can highlight the faces of your brand, specific employees, or pieces of your brand personality. The benefits of Stories lie in the fact that they are straight to the point, you only have a short period of time to catch consumer’s eyes to prevent them from just swiping past to the next ad or story. You’re not just looking for viewers, but overall impressions between likes, comments, link clicks, etc.

Instagram is a visually based app, but stories heighten that effect with the length of time you have.  These opportunities are best used for making a sale with the consumer, wherever they are in the buyer’s journey. Using a CTA is essential with this Instagram feature, turning this opportunity into great conversions for your business.

Why Use INSTAGRAM Reels?

The Instagram Reels feature was launched in 2020, but with TikTok and other short form videos blowing up the Internet again, Reels have gained a massive boost in popularity. The Explore tab in the Instagram app is one of your best options for growing your organic reach and getting to new consumers, driving up your impressions. However, Instagram’s algorithm is smart and will only boost content that is well made, so videos that have grainy audio or visuals or that are overall subpar will only hurt your branding. If you post anything that has average or below content, Instagram’s algorithms will take that into account for all of your future content.

While you can use paid ads for Stories once you get to 10k followers, Reels are not in the game for paid advertising; here it is all about organic and original content. You do have the benefit of posting your Reels on your regular posting feed and within your Stories, which is a plus when promoting to your followers. Having your well-crafted Reels show up on the Explore tab and improve your organic reach will do more for your brand than hashtags ever will.

Reels are best used for short-form content like Stories, but you have more than five seconds to catch their attention. This feature is all about creativity, branding awareness, and personality. Remember to still have some sort of CTA is important, but knowing who you are targeting is the main point to absorb.

Why Use IGTV?

IGTV (Instagram TV) is highly comparable to YouTube as this feature can have much longer videos, but they must be high quality. IGTV thrives on high quality, edited videos that are similar to YouTube’s how-to’s, educational videos, or informational videos.

Many news sources have taken to IGTV to improve their metrics and reach potential new viewers. Whether you use short clips that last one to two minutes or a video that is longer than 5-10 minutes, these are the opportunities you need to show your audience who you are as a brand, what your products are, and what problem you solve.

The major difference between IGTV and YouTube videos is IGTV is vertical in size, like how you would hold your phone to take a selfie. It is a mirror of TikTok and makes it a mix of both YouTube, which is horizontal in size, and TikTok, which has shorter videos, like the Reels feature.

Confused yet? There’s a lot to digest when it comes to the dynamic video features Instagram offers, so don’t hesitate to reach out to the Take Flight team to get a better handle on how your small business can utilize these (and more) to help drive your social media goals.