We often get asked by our B2B health tech clients to help them with a hashtag strategy for social media, mainly LinkedIn and Twitter.
Many of our clients are in the beginning days and months of their relationship with social media, very much learning what posts generate engagements and leads. Therefore, a hashtag is not necessarily top of mind – which is where we come in and help them develop.
Using hashtags is a great way to build followers and one of the very few ways to reach someone who isn’t already following you.
Our recommendations for B2B’s are pretty simple:
- Use hashtags for specificity—for example, industry terms and themes, events, and topics.
- Keep it to one to two hashtags per post. More is better for Instagram. Not Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Do your research. Don’t blindly use a hashtag without an understanding of how it is trending on the social platform. This will ensure your business isn’t associating itself with negative or inappropriate connotations.
- Match your brand voice. If you can, mix creative and professional when appropriate.
- Make sure hashtags are relevant. Take care in developing. You don’t want to be trending for something completely unrelated, like a consumer product, for example.
- Connect with your audience using hashtags. Join conversations. In the B2B space, you’ve most likely experienced this with (virtual) conferences. Did you even attend an event if you didn’t #tag it? 😉
B2B’s often serve niche market segments, and it’s important to be realistic and pragmatic about how viral your hashtag may/not go. It is crucial to keep the B2B lens in focus when developing a strategy for your organization’s hashtags.
In conclusion, hashtagging is an excellent avenue for users to discover your product and drive awareness for your brand.
