#givevalue

As a tech person who 'has a go' with lots of different systems I hear that people get confused over hashtags. What they are? Why use them? How do I know which ones to use etc. With all the many hundreds of hashtags for every day of the week, special interest days, weeks or months. For example its Repeat Day today .. if you loved it once, why not do it again? I like being part of conversations, learning something new because every day is a school day in this game of life! I'm still not having 6 kids, a car and a mansion thanks .. I'd rather my partner, daughter, cat and aspirations of van life!

Think of hashtags as labels of conversation.

Consider that the internet is one big room with millions of conversations happening. It would be great if would could know what those conversations were so that we could join in. Oh how I wish this were possible on networking evenings! Hashtags are the labels of what is happening in those conversations. The best way that people will know, like and trust you, is to show up in those conversations.

There are three kinds of hashtag groups to be part of:

Days of the Week There are many many hashtags that feature a day of the week, this is a great way for you to create marketing content in your business that takes part in this conversation labels. For example: use #FollowFriday sometimes also known as #FF on twitter, to tag your friend, colleague, fellow business collaboration and talk about it. #MondayMantra #MarketingMonday #MondayMotivation #ManCrushMonday #MusicMonday #ManicMonday #TransformationTuesday #TuesdayTruth #TipTuesday #TuesdayTreat #TuesdayThoughts #GoodnewsTuesday #WanderlustWednesday #WednesdayWisdom #WomanCrushWednesday #WellnessWednesday #WinItWednesday #WednesdayWorkout #ThursdayThoughts #ThankfulThursday #ThrowbackThursday #ThirstyThursday #TransformationThursday #ThinkAboutItThursday #FridayFunny #FearlessFriday #FactFriday #FridayReads #FollowFriday #FridayFeels #SaturdayShoutout #SaturdayWalk #SaturdayAfternoon #ScreenshotsSaturday #SaturdayMarket #SaturdayCoffee #SundayShopping #SundaySunggles #SundayBumDay #SundayBaking #SundayMealPrep #SundayRunDay Interesting Days and Awareness Events There's a great site that I use to figure out what is coming up in the future that I could use to start or continue a conversation. It's called: Days of the Year. I like this site because its clear, friendly and free. As well as providing our services and skills as a business, we can also be volunteers for a cause. Most causes have an awareness day, week or month. Show a rounded person in your business, what are you passionate about. It doesn't always have to be about philanthropy, the fact you're a chocoholic means that you could have spoken about it being #ChocolateMacaroonDay today. Maybe you've bought some from a local shop and they did something unique in their customer service that you loved. That inspired you to do something similar in your own business. Mixing both a personal interest with something in your business. Topics in and around what you do in your business Thirdly you can use hashtags that relate directly to what you do in your business. Think of all the ways you can name your services. Mine would be #WebDesign #WebsiteDesign #Wordpress #WebsiteDesigner #WebDesigner and even add your country initials: UK. Making it #WebDesignUK. There is an easy way to search and find what is popular and used frequently and those that are less popular and less frequently. I'd advocate mixing and matching both. When doing a # search on Instagram in their search box you will see the frequency number as well.

Always think about how to get your content shared for as long as possible. If you consider popularity numbers you'll know that in the stream of conversation used 5 million times, your content will last seconds before thousands of other posts will push it out of sight. This is why we use less popularly known hashtags so that our content will be shown for longer within that hashtag stream. Do you remember this graphic from my blog in doing your marketing using your blog AND social media?

One thing to note, people DO follow hashtags. If you aren't aware of it or aren't following hashtags relevant to your business .. you're missing out on being visible and part of the conversation. Share your work, your knowledge and expertise, let people know you're there. Choose the days of the week that you will regularly write and share a blog post full of value and supplement it with marketing posts to join the conversation. With hashtags that fit those days. Remember to also engage and write comments on others social media AND their blogs. Don't be the odd duck who just talks outwards, expecting praise and adoration comments. It won't happen. You also need to comment and interact with others .. soon you'll build a network of people who reciprocate and before you know it, you'll have new networks of connections. Be brave, be visible and part of the conversation, those hashtags are simply labels so that you know what the topic is that's being discussed. Wish I could have those as virtual reality bubbles above peoples heads in real life at networking events!

What will you talk about today using hashtags?

What will you comment on today via a hashtag search?

By marketing, I mean anything you share about what you do in your business.

Do you know that your own website blog can host content far far longer than any social media network?

It seems blatantly obvious to me but sometimes the stunningly obvious, its err .. not obvious! On any social network, you may have a few hours (if you're lucky: months) of your content being visible, sometimes just it's just minutes. I'm giving side-eye to Twitter here. It's a great platform that mimics live conversations and that is its strength, its immediate. But, if your customer isn't there in those minutes, they've missed learning about you, knowing something more and the chance to like what you do. Which all builds up to trusting you know what you're doing. Your marketing, especially marketing with any value needs duration and the only place you will get that is on your own website and I'm hoping that you're blogging too. Because honestly, google LOVES blog posts. Especially if its evergreen content that can keep being re-shared! I saw a really interesting graphic showing how the Twitter content lifespan was 18 minutes, Facebook is 5 hours, Instagram is 21 and so forth. It was written back in 2016 and a lot changes in 4 years, what tech did then with their algorithms is not necessarily how it works today. If you want to know the details on this read Jon-Stephen Stansel post on How Long Does Bad Content Last? .. still, even with all the changes there is a fundamental truth. Your blog content will outlast any social media presence, with one HUGE bonus that I'll tell you further down.

In the original infographic, it showed the minutes, hours, months duration for how long content was displayed effectively to your audience on each network. I've repurposed this but made it into a more abstract timeline, because while the exact hours and minutes do matter to some (plus I can't find any recent studies on it) .. its not the gist of my message here. So I won't bother sharing the original infographic, it's now out of date from 2016. But the principle of it remains true. Social media content doesn't display for long in front of your customers. So apart from scrolling your timeline, they can't search for something interesting. So let this be a hint, have a search bar on your website. If you are blogging, and creating value for your customers to learn from your experience .. help them by letting them know your blog categories and giving them a search bar as well.

So what's the HUGE bonus for writing content on your websites blog?

*drumroll* You can keep re-sharing it! Yeah, yeah I snuck that tidbit in earlier .. but seriously, recognise the power potential of this statement. You have spent time creating graphics (I hope) for some or all of your social media. That's time you're not getting back, which includes the time of posting to each network or using a scheduler. Everything in business is about what you choose to spend your time on. Social media while great for networking and being where your customers are can be a huge colossal waste of time if not done effectively. Even the masters of social media marketing won't get it right every time. The other massive benefit of having a blog is that you can reshare your content using a social media management tool like Blog 2 Social. I have a blog post that I'm writing up about that plugin that I'll release soon. So you can write once, reshare your evergreen content, again and again .. and again .. then again at any point of time you wish and any frequency too.

Now, isn't that a smarter way to work and market what you do?