Looking to get more exposure to your content? If so, the importance of hashtags on Twitter is not to be overlooked. Although Twitter hashtags are completely optional, you’d be doing yourself a massive disservice not to be using them.

Think about the amount of competition you’re facing on a massive social media platform like this. To make your tweets stand out and not get buried underneath the sea of content that gets posted there on a daily basis, you’re going to need a sound and solid marketing strategy and hashtags happen to be a significant part of it.

Not only that; by using them, you’ll be on your way to building genuine relationships with those who like to spend their time on the platform simply by having an easier time getting discovered. It’s completely up to you where you want to take it from there, but to reach that phase, it’s an essential step you need to make.

Since we’ve already covered the best practices on how to use hashtags on social media, it’s time to kick things up a notch by drilling down into a more niche-specific subtopic of how to find winning hashtags for Twitter, specifically.

So do hashtags help on Twitter? You bet they do! It’s how people can find your tweets despite your account not having millions of followers like celebrities do. But it’s essential to use the right ones. We’ll show you how by giving you concrete, actionable tips you can apply today!

Capitalize on event hashtags

As the name suggests, event hashtags on Twitter make it known that your tweet is in relation to an upcoming event. Whether you’re organizing one yourself or commenting on an event organized by others, using event hashtags is a great way to bundle relevant content together, thus helping the internal algorithms find it and classify it accordingly.

For obvious reasons, you’re going to need to come up with your very own unique hashtag if you’re organizing an event yourself, but that’s not the strategy that we’re going to be touching upon today. Instead, try to come up with a list of upcoming events that are in some way or another related to what your business does and see if you can add something of value to it. And yes, intelligent commentary counts too!

Once you’ve identified the event itself, you need to pull up every hashtag that people are using in reference to it. It’s very important to get it right down to the last character – you need to be using the exact event hashtag if you want to get discovered on Twitter. The good news is, you won’t even need to venture outside of Twitter to do this – using its built-in search bar should be the only tool that’s needed to find hashtags like these.

“Steal” the best Twitter hashtags from influencers

Know someone in your niche who has a decent following? Chances are they’ve used hashtags on numerous occasions. It’s nothing flashy, but you may find it worth going through their tweets one by one, jotting down any relevant hashtags you happen to stumble upon. To speed up the process, copy their entire tweet history into a word editor of your choice and take advantage of the ‘find’ function. After all, a hashtag always starts with #, followed by one or more words with no spaces in between.

Well, at least the term ‘reverse engineering’ has something flashy to it, although it may feel like a grind. After all, if an influencer has chosen to use a specific hashtag, it’s probably for a reason. If you want to take this even further, it’s likely you’ll discover other industry influencers while you’re doing this. As you do, repeat the process for every single one of them for more hashtag galore. Try seeing how deep the rabbit hole goes – it gets infinitely more fun if you’re looking at it from this angle.

Ride the wave of popular hashtags

Just like ocean waves, trends come and go. Knowing this, it’s on you to decide whether you want to have this phenomenon working for or against you. By discovering the most popular Twitter hashtags today, you will be positioning your content where it’s sought after the most.

Examples of popular hashtags on Twitter include event hashtags we’ve already mentioned, but if you’re looking for something more predictable, seasonal hashtags also work very well. Of course, having your content noticed for something like #Christmas during the Christmas season is going to be tough due to the volume of the competition.

You can, however, be smart about your hashtag selection by niching down a little bit. For example, something like #Christmasvibes will still have enough people searching for it, but the competition will be noticeably weaker.

Keep your eyes on the latest news

Using news-related hashtags on Twitter is what you can do to chime in. After all, there is always something news-worthy happening – if you combine that with the fact that people come to social media to seek out influencers’ perspective on things, you’ve got yourself a winning formula.

If anything, there will be more of these appearing than you’ll have the time to capitalize on, so it’s best to stick to commenting on the ones that are somehow related to your industry. For example, if you’re a crypto startup, you can comment on cryptocurrency-related news or perhaps even the latest stunt that Elon Musk has managed to pull off.

Again, this works because certain people are tired of the mainstream media and want to hear it like it is from everyday people who don’t profit off of sensationalism. At the same time, you should always research the matter before commenting on it, because it’s easy to put a stain on your credibility if you tweet something uninformed.

Use Twitter’s Explore functionality

On Twitter, there should be an Explore tab to the left side of your screen. Click it and start exploring organic hashtag opportunities. The cool thing about this is that the content you’ll see is custom-tailored to your own interests and your account history. This way, you could potentially discover a handful of hidden gems just by scrolling through the first couple of results pages.

Not every single hashtag you find will be relevant, so it’s up to you to decide which ones are noteworthy and which ones you can discard without giving it a second thought. The idea is to get a quick glimpse into what kind of hashtags are commonly used within your industry or niche. To get the most relevant results, make sure to do this with the Twitter account you use for business purposes as the suggested content tends to be personalized.

Meme it up

Ah, the internet. No matter where you look, there is bound to be someone posting funny jokes to brighten up your day. Since most people tend to be receptive towards this type of content, you might as well use the very same strategy yourself.

There will be times when a certain type of meme goes viral. As a savvy social media marketer, you should be looking for opportunities to capitalize on that. The best part about it is that you don’t even need to come up with your own jokes; something as simple as rehashing a joke or putting your own spin on it can do wonders.

Post helpful tips using evergreen niche hashtags

People love getting helpful tips, especially if they’re getting them for free. Do hashtags matter on Twitter? The answer is a two-fold ‘yes’; not only do they help people discover relevant content faster, Twitter’s algorithm also feeds off of them. As long as they’re used tastefully and sparingly, everybody wins!

What’s best about niche hashtags is that they never go out of fashion. For example, something like #marketingtips will stay relevant whether it’s 2020 or 2030. We’re not suggesting you should be using this particular one if your company offers some type of marketing services, but it should be something along these lines (again, do your diligence first).

As we’ve outlined in our Twitter hashtag best practices section, ideally, you should not be using more than a couple of hashtags per tweet. Feel free to place them within the body of the tweet or append them at the end.

Use a hashtag generator

Ever since AI has reached such an advanced state, you can harness its power to analyze your tweets and have it suggest the most suitable hashtags for Twitter, even as a complete beginner. Wondering what tool to use for the purpose? Shameless plug – Ocoya is here to help!

In fact, it’s a one-stop shop for all your social media needs from where you can schedule your tweets in advance and embed the most fitting hashtags for Twitter without having to be a tech whiz.

Navigate to the main page and find Ocoya's Copywriter section to the left.

Pick a template to the right.

Keep scrolling through the results until you find the powerful hashtag generator that we're going tobe using.

Populate the relevant fields and let it do its magic.

Ocoya's hashtag generator will generate plenty of hashtags for you to use. Alternatively, you can also access the very same functionality straight from the post editor you'd normally use for post scheduling (look for the '#' symbol).

Use Twitter research tools

If you want to get super technical about finding the best Twitter hashtags, there are certain tools that can help you do that. Since tools like these can come and go, it’s best to do your own research to find the latest and greatest offerings. Nevertheless, we’re going to give you a brief overview of what’s out there in the here and the now.

Hashtagify

As the tool itself claims, it’s how you search for hashtag popularity, trends, and correlations. You can also use it to discover competitors and influencers in your niche.

To get started, enter a general keyword that describes your market. The tool will then go on to suggest related hashtags for your query that are trending in popularity on Twitter.

RiteTag

Getting started only takes inputting a seed keyword. Then, the tool will return two lists of Twitter hashtags – the trending ones and the ones you can use as part of your long-term growth strategy.

It even gives you a mindmap that makes it easy to see which hashtags are correlated.

Trendsmap

As its name suggests, this tool focuses on getting the hashtags that are currently trending on Twitter. And yes, you can even break down your search into different regions of the world so as to help you find the most relevant ones for your local area.

It’s also a great tool to use for the purpose of researching how different regions respond to trends. A super advanced method you can use in conjunction with this is to create different buyer personas for each of these regions and optimize your content accordingly.

And speaking of local hashtags...

Consider using regional hashtags if your services are targeting a specific area

Let’s suppose you’re a furniture retailer that caters to a specific region. What you want to do is to find a way to sneak in those regional hashtags on Twitter to help your store get the attention of prospective customers that are located in your area.

For instance, a good way to pull this off is if you’re selling a unique piece of furniture that’s only available at one of your stores. For this to work, it truly has to be a special piece – it’s unlikely that someone will be willing to travel for miles on end just to buy a generic product.

Sprinkle some branding hashtags every once in a while

Although technically you don’t really find branding hashtags (they are literally the name of your brand without spaces), it’s important to incorporate them into your overall Twitter marketing and content creation strategy. The only exception is if there’s a street name for one of your products (for example, Coca Cola is also referred to as ‘coke’ in many parts of the world). Obviously, you should be using that too.

If you’re on the verge of creating a brand, it makes sense to double check the brand you’re planning to be using isn’t already in use by someone else. You don’t want to create any unnecessary confusion – plus, there’s no reason to promote someone else’s brand, unless it’s genuinely something you’d vouch for or if it happens to be one of your business partners.

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Long story short, do hashtags matter on Twitter? You betcha! Finding winning hashtags for Twitter starts with having a general idea of where to look for them. If utilized properly, they will be a powerful carrying force to aid your brand’s growth. Don’t spam them, don’t overdo them, but other than that, using them is virtually a must in today’s competitive social media space where every creator’s posts are butting heads to pierce through the noise.

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