If there are two tools on any social media platform that will either benefit or hinder your business, your social media presence and growth, it has to be hashtags and captions. Ironically enough, they are the last thing that most small businesses think about when creating content for their business and their growing audience. These two tools which are used across every social media platform, are probably the most essential tools to learn, practice and consider when strategizing your content. They are also the two tools that everyone can and will get better with the more they practice. We often get messages from small business asking us how to master these two tools, and the first thing we will start by saying is that not using captions and hashtags on your content is an automatic no-no. We will go into that more a little bit later.
In this Blog post, we are going to discuss these two topics in depth (broken down into the sections listed below) and help you gain the knowledge and skill to use these two functions to their greatest potential to boost you and your small business. We are going to provide you with a simple formula for how to choose your hashtags, and offer you ideas and tricks for crafting compelling - and more importantly, easy - captions that really engage and grow your audience. This will help you share your products and services, and assist in honing your business' unique voice. Welcome to Back To Basics: Hashtags & Captions.
Hashtags
What Are They & What Do They Do?
Why Are They Important & What Happens When You Do Not Use Them?
How Do You Create A Functional & Optimal Hashtag Set?
Captions
Why Do You Need Captions?
What Are The Different Caption Styles?
How Can You Write Captivating Captions?
Hashtags
What Are They & What Do They Do?
Hashtags are keywords or phrases preceded by the hash symbol (#) in social media posts. Depending on how old you are, you may also know them as the ''pound sign''. They serve several purposes, all of which are very important and useful. But we would say the four most useful functions are the following:
Increase Engagement And Reach - Hashtags help users discover content they care about and guide businesses, brands and individuals to target audiences & communities interested in their niche. Using the right hashtags can quickly and efficiently help your content be shown to a wider audience than you organically have.
Act As Tags - Hashtags categorize content, allowing users to find exactly what they're looking for. Think of them as an index; when used correctly, they help to include you and your content in relevant indexing and search results.
Provide Additional Context & Cross-Referencing - Hashtags add relevant information to your content. Many small businesses and individuals are often found because of tags, but not always in their desired category. For instance, maybe you have an ice cream shop in North Bay, ON, and you use a tag that references your region. Perhaps tourists to the area were not thinking about ice cream places, but your business had a tag that showed up in their search for that region and now they've decided to visit your shop. Your business and the regional area were crossed-referenced to provide broader context.
Create Community Around A Topic - They say you should seek what is seeking you. That is what hashtags do to create communities around specific topics of interest, making it easier for people to connect to said community.
Why Are They Important & What Happens When You Do Not Use Them?
There is a lot of noise on social media with social media "gurus" and "marketers" saying all kinds of things; making all kinds of grandiose claims about how you need to do things to go viral. All of them have their own "method" for success on social media. Some tell you to use none, some tell you to use some, and some suggest ridiculous methods that have nothing to do with you, your business, your audience, or anything really.
So the question, should you use them? The short answer is yes. Yes, 100% use hashtags. And use the full, allotted amount each social media platform allows you to use. Hashtags are an essential asset in your toolbox and they are free. They help to connect you and the people you want to engage and share with. More than anything, they are not really for you. They are for the algorithm and system to connect people. It's how you help the system helps you! That is why they are important. People often think technology is hard, but its not. It does what we tell it to do. So if we use the correct format and tell it to connect us, it will.
So what happens when you do not use them? Nothing. Not a single thing and not in a good way. When you post content anywhere that has no hashtag, you have provided the system with nothing to work with, no context for the algorithm to utilize. It's like handing in a paper, but not putting your name on it. What good are great photos, products, services, or captions if there is no idea of who it is for? When you post content that does not have hashtags, the only people who may see it are your immediate already existing followers and maybe not even more of them. Fun Fact: Most individuals like your extended family and friends are not following accounts; they are following topics of interest and hashtags. What is populating their explore feed are accounts that have used hashtags that they have shown interest in. Your followers found you one of four ways:
They know you personally. They are friends, family and people you have met in real life who you know and want to support you.
They met you at an event or though another account.
They saw your business from an advertisement, marketing for a event/market/retail space or a collaboration.
You used a hashtag a user is interested in, has searched, or they are following. They connected to you through the connector, the hashtag.
So while your content may be up and available, it's really only being up and available. It's not helping to build your reach or round out your social presence in a way that's working for you when you are not working. More than anything, it's not helping you connect to new potential audience members.
How Do You Create A Functional & Optimal Hashtag Set?
We get messages daily asking us how do you pick your hashtags and how do you ensure they are working? Well, working means the hashtags are helping to connect you when you are not online. They are optimizing and growing themselves over time. Eventually, when your hashtags are at their most optimal, you will be connecting with other users regularly and being shown in the explore feed frequently. We like to say that a little work in the beginning, when done well, will serve you over and over again and time and time again. We always suggest that all users be using the maximum amount of hashtag allotted spaces. Never mind this "use four strategy" that many of these gurus and marketers try to sell you. Apps give you a set allotted amount and each spot for a hashtag is an opportunity. The fact is, the only accounts that can get away with not using the full amount of hashtags on their content are huge, and they only got huge by putting in the work. So here it is a 6x5 formula.
The 6x5 formula is super simple. You are going to offer 6 groups of 5 hashtags. The groups are divided up into primary and secondary, with 6 distinct purposes. they are as follows:
Branded - Primary
These are hashtags for building YOUR presence online. They should include hashtags that you will use on every piece of content. They build around your business and your brand. The first one should be your business name. The second is your handle on the various platforms. For example, we are going to use our ONSBC ones. They are #ontariosmallbusinesscommunity #onsbc #shoplocalontario #ontariosmallbusiness #ontariobusiness. When you search these tags, we as a platform and a community dominate. We are at the top and all though these hashtags. These are tags built around our business and brand.
Locational/Regional - Primary
So many people are looking for what is close or regionally relevant to them. People want to connect and do things locally first. For that reason, and as an example, here are the local/regional tags we use. They are #ontariocanada #ontariomade #madeinontario #shoplocalontario #ontariolocal. This is to help locals connect with us and increase our chances of them finding us.
Business Adjacent - Primary
A lot of the time, you are not always going to be found by your specific tags, but linked or adjacent tags. Tags that may apply to you, but are not your main ones. For instance, ours are #shoplocal #shopsmall #smallbusinesscommunity #smallbusinesssupport #shoplocacanada. We operate in Ontario, but use #shoplocacanada to find fellow Ontarians who don't know about us as of yet. We may not be posting content specifically about shopping or support, but the more content indexed with us using this tag, the more opportunities for the system to match us with people who might be interested in these things.
Audience Building - Secondary
Even larger accounts want to cultivate an audience around an idea or an ethos. Allotting 6 tags to expand your reach can be helpful. The larger you get, the larger your connected circles get on social media. The wider the net, the more opportunities to connect. For example, we use #communityovercompetition or #bettertogether. These help us to cultivate people who have some of the same mindset, and have the same goals that we do. These are people who want to be #communityminded. We do not have a lot of negativity or trolls in our community. This is because we don't invite them through our tags.
Themed - Secondary
These are simple tags related to a theme. For example, if your business makes candles, use candle-related tags like #localcandlemaker, #scentedcandles, #candlescanada, #albertacandlemaker. These are just examples of themed/regional tags. Themed tags should be centered around what your business or community is offering. If it's education, then find some themed educational tags. If it's recipes, the same thing. If it's cozy aesthetic home decor, the same thing. These tags work wonderfully when you pick underused tags. For instance, people shouldn't use #candlesforsale. That hashtag has millions of content pieces tagged with it. Instead, they should use #localcandlesforsale. Remember, we do not need these kinds of tags to be 100% accurate; these are cross-referencing tags.
Topical - Secondary
These tags should be what your content piece is about. Are you showcasing a product or a service? Then use tags that are related directly to what is in the caption, photo, or video. We post a lot of motivational and inspirational content. We love using #bemotivated #beinspired #amotivatedmindset or #aninspiredmind. These are directly related to what we happen to be talking about in our content piece.
Tip: Once you have set of primary tags, copy and paste them into Notes or a document you can copy and paste from. Then populate the rest once you have an idea of the photo, videos, and captions and you are ready to post. The first three kinds of tags we discussed are primary tags, and the other three groups are secondary. The secondary tags are flexible and interchangeable. You should be changing these regularly for each post or at least every season to keep things moving.
So there it is. An easy formula that anyone can populate. We would suggest brainstorming a little bit before you commit to your primary tag groups. These hashtags are going to be with you a long time, and will have the greatest impact on your long-term growth and optimization. Take a weekend and think about how you want to present your business and select your primary tags from there. As for the secondary tags, try new things and take confidence in knowing your primary tags are always working for you. This isn't a strategy based on what's "trendy" or "viral", this is a mixture of being specific and casting a wide net. When you are able to pair those things together in your hashtags, you are sure to see success. Hashtags do not need to be hard. They feel like they, are but we have seen this formula work for thousands of small businesses and sometimes a little bit of hard work and preparation go a long way.
Captions
Why Do You Need Captions?
People visit social media to check out pictures and videos, but it’s a great caption that really pulls a piece of content together. The no captions approach is not well received by audiences and viewers. So not having one needs to be a exception when you are sharing content, and not the rule. Literal captions provide a straightforward description of the content, such as identifying a mountain range in a landscape photo. On the other hand, some captions aim to enhance a post by adding a compelling statement or a witty word. A captivating caption not only engages and amuses the audience, but also prompts them to like, comment, and visit your profile. Regardless of whether a person is a casual social media user, an influencer, or a business account, increased engagement will always be advantageous for their profile. Since most social media platforms prioritize popular and engaging content in their algorithms, it is essential to craft thoughtful captions if you wish to expand your presence on the platform.
What Are The Different Caption Styles?
When creating your captions to accompany your visual content, it's best to ask yourself what the goal of the content is going to be. There are usually five types of content that a poster would choose to reach their goal. They are as follows:
Value or Educational
These types of captions should provide value of an educational nature to your content by teaching, informing, or providing solutions to problems, or adding to your audience's knowledge.
Motivational or Inspirational
Much of what we see is not so much about what was said, but how it makes us feel. This type of caption should aim to evoke an emotion in your reader, and get them fired up and feeling motivated to take action after reading.
Entertaining
Let's be honest; everyone wants to be entertained. Entertaining captions should do exactly that, entertain your audience! Have fun with this content, experiment, and see what works best. If you are a funny person, silly, quirky, or your products and services are off the beaten path, run with it and lean into it. Social media content has a short shelf life so tell the joke, and if it flops, that's okay. Try again with the next one.
Tell A Story
We love this medium of captions. We use it the most in our Virtual Market featured content. Captions that tell stories help your audience get to know you, relate to you, and build trust in you, your business, and your offerings. This is a medium for transparency and authenticity. This is often the hardest type of caption to write, and we would not suggest starting here if you are new or not confident in your writing abilities. You will often see this format from social accounts that have strong written communication skills.
Promotional Captions
These are a favorites of product and services content. This is what kind of captions are expected from business and services. Often there will be a CTA - Call To Action integrated into the caption.
How Can You Write Captivating Captions?
We will not lie. Captions are not one size fits all! You have to play around a bit. We use all of these caption styles, but for anyone who is not feeling super confident, we say pick two. Select the two main ones that you want to have associated with the experience the audience will have with your business. Do you want to be serious and professionally driven? Then we may suggest sticking to value or educational captions. Do you want to be fun and spunky? Then we would say that entertaining is for you. Do you just want to sell your products and not mess around? Then we would suggest promotional. Remember, there is no secret way to write captions that are going to send your content viral. It's usually a combination of a lot of moving parts for that to happen. Try a few different styles out and eventually you will find your voice, and build a voice for your business. Seek a tone that your audience can distinctly match up to your business. Really, do not be afraid. Remember, if you bomb, you can delete it and there will always be an opportunity to try again tomorrow! Eventually, you will get it and it will feel good for you as a business owner, and feel good for your audience and business.
Now you have a formula for creating effective hashtags and a roadmap for creating great captions. Get out there and practice them. Practice is going to help you improve and increase the likelihood of guaranteed social media success! Our next piece in our Back To Basics: Socials Series is The Five "W's" In Media, where we discuss the essential items needed for selling anything. The core of how selling works and how to drive sales of both products and services is as simple as the Five "W's" and conveying them correctly to yield a desired outcome. You can find it here: Back To Basics: The Five "W's" In Media.
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More In The ONSBC Back To Basics Series
Instagram Basics: A Guide To Using Instagram
Facebook Basics: A Guide To Using Facebook For Business
Hashtags & Captions
The Five “W’s” In Media
Ghosting On Your Posting
Content Creation Foundations
Social Do’s & Do Not’s
Free Apps To Help You Add Value To Your Social Media, Content & Marketing
( Will Be Released August 19th '24)
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