What Hashtags Do the Best Twitter Marketers Use?
Twitter is one of the most incredibly useful tools for marketers. Engagement, reach, and unique features allow marketers to address their audience, create a dialogue, and build a strong relationship with their existing or prospect customers.
Twitter Marketing is quite straightforward and the basic rules are: commitment and honesty.
Once you become familiar with the platform, it’s time to learn how to quickly grow your follower base and how to target your focus group. The quality of your followers depends on the content you share.
It doesn’t matter if you focus on content curation or if you prefer to share thoughts or ideas. Good content is always well-received. You can share your own content or share interesting Tweets, concentrate on quotes or infographics….Twitter is extremely versatile and now offers plenty of opportunities to share valuable media that include text, videos, moments, live streams and pictures.
The right content, together with consistency, will allow you to quickly gain momentum and create a loyal audience you can talk to. But what about hashtags?
Why You Should Use Twitter Hashtags
Hashtags were introduced to categorize conversations and they’re extremely powerful tools for searching relevant Tweets or accounts and targeting the right audience.
Using the right hashtags means joining a conversation and adding your point of view. At the same time, though, hashtags can be used to stand out and be found.
As many other social media channels, Twitter is becoming pretty crowded. When following thousands of interesting accounts, your feed soon becomes jammed with information. Every minute that goes by you’ll see hundreds of new Tweets added to your list.
Twitter can’t show ALL the Tweets that the accounts you follow post. People on Twitter like to tweet a lot. And frequency is one of the keys in Twitter Marketing as well!
Twitter’s algorithm selects the most relevant information for you based on interactions, topic, engagement…pretty much the same recipe that Facebook adopts to choose what content ends up in your newsfeed.
Recently, though, many marketers on Twitter noticed a little drop in number of organic impressions of their Tweets. And that’s okay! It’s a natural development that derives from the fact that more people are joining the Twitter family and from recent changes in the algorithm which are aimed at improving the quality of your feed.
Additionally, more and more people are using automation for their social media channels and steering their Twitter accounts in autopilot. Again, that’s not a bad thing either! Considering that Twitter Marketers should be tweeting approximately twice an hour to be noticed and increase their number of followers, some form of automation is obviously necessary.
But good marketers know that social interaction is one of the key steps in Twitter marketing. Therefore, your content is not lost even though fewer people tend to access their feeds.
Twitter search is a the best way to discover relevant information and accounts. And since more and more people are using it, your keywords and the kinds of tweets you post will help you stand out anyway.
That’s why hashtags are becoming even more relevant now than when they were first introduced!
Besides, people often add Tweeps to lists according to the hashtags they use. And being mentioned in several lists increases you popularity and number of followers.
What Hashtags You Need To Use
Knowing what hashtags you should use will help you address the right audience and start a dialogue with your leads or potential business partners. But you have to learn how to use them wisely.
Some hashtags are overused, and in this kind of hyper-competitive environment your messages can easily go unnoticed. Creating your own hashtags is awesome and if they catch on you can create a whole bubble to talk about your product or service.
The first step is learning how to deal with common hashtags that gurus in your industry use and try to create original combinations. A tag like #marketing is very popular but if your account is just growing, chances are that your Tweets will not be listed in the search results for that hashtags.
Try to use more specific hashtags and vary from time to time to see what happens. Research, testing and monitoring, focus and variety are the most important elements of Twitter Marketing.
The most used Hashtags by Twitter Rockstars
Our word cloud includes some of the most popular hashtags that great Twitter marketers continuously use. The larger the word, the more often the hashtag is used by different social media gurus.
To generate the list, I concentrated on some of the most popular Twitter Marketing accounts I follow using different analytic tools such as Scraawl. These are all great people who happen to be extremely good at using Twitter for marketing purposes. if you need inspiration and if you love great content, you should definitely follow all the accounts reported below as well.
After selecting some of the most popular Twitter marketing accounts, we checked what hashtags each of these marketers use more often. To be in the list, a hashtags must have been used a few times by that person. Specific hashtags that were created around their brand or products were omitted because they’re uniquely relevant to that person and can’t be generally used by others.
It’s worth noticing that not all successful social media marketers use a lot of hashtags. If on the one hand, you see people like Jeff Bullas that constantly implements lots of very different keywords, on the other hand, some people concentrate their attention on one or two specific tags (like Melonie Dodaro) and others simply ignore hashtags altogether.
Some marketers already run extremely successful social media channels and can leverage their popularity and personal brand to generate attention and engagement. For them, hashtags might be superfluous. Generally, though, it’s recommended that you use two or three hashtags per Tweet in order to be noticed and grow your influence.
A Breakdown of the Most Common Marketing Hashtags used by Social Media Influencers
The word cloud is a useful tool to spot the most effective and most competitive hashtags. Let’s see now what accounts we specifically looked at in order to generate it. If your target audience is similar to the audience that these accounts address, you might want to use this breakdown as inspiration for your own Twitter Marketing Strategy. Additionally, some people use very specific hashtags you might not have heard of and that you might want to try and experiment with.
You’ll see that some hashtags appear in the same line. This happens is those tags are often used together.
The accounts I’ve chosen belong to some of my friends or role models who successfully use Twitter as a marketing tool independently from their number of followers. I don’t claim that the list is comprehensive! If you have any other suggestions…please, feel free to mention your favorite Twitter marketers in a comment and I might include more accounts in an updated version of this blog post.
Twitter Marketers who seldom use Hashtags
Let’s start with a couple of social media gurus who virtually use no hashtags at all:
Mari Smith @MariSmith
Mari is a Facebook Marketer Expert, speaker and author. She created a very large audience of loyal followers. She tweets a lot about content marketing and social media marketing without actually using any hashtags.
Gary Vaynerchuk @garyvee
Gary is a true social media rockstar, speaker and entrepreneur. His number of followers is humongous and the content he shares is precious. Again, though, he can simply leverage his popularity and personal brand without using any hashtags.
Guy Kawasaki @GuyKawasaki
Author, speaker, evangelist, Guy has a huge number of followers and pretty good level of engagement on Twitter but he doesn’t use hashtags.
Twitter Marketers and their favorite Hashtags
Let’s check now a couple of marketers who strictly focus all their attention on one or two hashtags.
Melonie Dodaro @MelonieDodaro
THE LinkedIn Expert. Author, speaker, digital marketing superstar. Her choice of hashtags is extremely focused and connected to her area of expertise:
#LinkedIn
#PR
Joe Pulizzi @JoePulizzi
Top Content Marketing Expert, author and influencer behind Content Marketing Institute and Content Marketing World. On top of specific hashtags connected to his company and events, he clearly focuses on his mission:
#contentmarketing
#ContentStrategy
Ted Rubin @TedRubin
Social Media Marketing strategist, keynote speaker, brand evangelist, he rarely uses hashtags. The ones we found:
#ROI
#SocialMedia
Vincent Dignan @vincentdignan
True Growth Hacker, public speaker, social media marketer. He also owes most of his success to his own personal brand, kickstarter campaigns and public appearances. His seldom uses hashtags and these include:
#startup
#startups
#quote
#quotes
But now, let’s move on to those marketers who decided to use the power of hashtags for their Twitter marketing strategy.
Mike Kawula @MikeKawula
I obviously need to start the list with Mike. Mike is THE Twitter Marketing Expert. He’s also the inspiration for this article which spawned from his Twitter Marketing Challenge and a mini conversation we had on Facebook about hashtags. Mike is the CEO of Social Quant, author of a best selling book on Twitter Marketing and social media expert. I owe most of my success on Twitter to him.
His favorite hashtags:
#Twitter
#Marketing
#Business
#SocialMedia
#Ebook
#Sales
#startup
#SmallBiz
#Entrepreneurs
#Webinar
#Website
Kim Garst @kimgarst
Top Social Media Influencer, keynote speaker, one of the most recognizable profiles on Twitter. If your target audience is similar to hers here’s a list of the hashtags she likes to use:
#business
#twitter
#youtubetips
#website
#HOWTO
#pinterest
#advertising
#klout
#blog
#keyword #contentmarketing
#digitalproducts
#visualcontent
#GoogleanAlytics
#SocialMediaTips
#Periscope
#content
#Google #Communities
#Money
#SocialMedia
#SuccessTips
#SEO
Sujan Patel @sujanpatel
Growth Marketer, awesome blogger, digital marketing expert, influencer, entrepreneur and skydiver
He tends to use quite a lot of hashtags that include:
#Writing
#Brand
#SaaS
#SocialMedia
#Sales
#Marketing
#Experts
#Copywriting
#Growth
#SEO
#ContentMarketing
#GrowthHacking
#Conversions
#Ecommerce
#Optimization
#Influencer
#Traffic
#Retail
#AdWords
#crm
Rebekah Radice @RebekahRadice
CMO, Evangelist, Top Social Media and Content Marketing influencer, speaker and author. She focuses on her area of experitse and addresses entrepreneurs using:
#contentmarketing
#TuesdayMotivation
#Motivation
#Marketing
#Inspiration
#SocialMedia
#Quote
#Entrepreneur
#Succcess
#Business
Jeff Bullas @jeffbullas
Top Content Marketing influencer, Social Media Strategist, speaker, incredible blogger, entrepreneur. He uses a lot of hashtags connected to the huge amount of great and varied content he produces. Some of his favorite tags:
#blogging
#roi
#contentmarketing
#influencermarketing
#socialmedia
#pinterest #pinterestmarketing
#youtube
#facebook
#automation
#ugc
#bloggingtips
#contentmarketingtips
#selfdevelopment
#entrepreneurship
#smallbusiness #growth
#goalssetting
#motivation
#getstuffdone
#generatingleads
#wordpress
#howtostartablog
#socialmediamarketing
#smm
Michael Brenner @BrennerMichael
Top Content Marketing Expert, speaker, CEO of Marketing Insider Group, author, top influencer, consultant and speaker. He uses Twitter to reach a very broad audience with his content using extremely specific hashtags that include:
#contentmarketing
#marketing
#email #marketers
#marketingstrategy
#infographic
#data
#inbounmarketing
#content
#interactive #content
#startup
#smallbiz
#marketingautomation
Neil Patel @neilpatel
Social media guru, entrepreneur, influencer, ultra-busy blogger, founder of Crazy Egg and Quicksprout. Despite his huge popularity on Twitter (and Facebook) he seldom uses hashtags and when he does these are his choices:
#podcasting
#emailmarketing
#blogger
#blogging
#marketing
Marsha Collier @MarshaCollier
Influencer, podcast celebrity , founder, author, she wrote 48 books on commerce, social media, ebay, customer service. She targets her audience with these hashtags:
#techradio
#ecommerce
#BigData
#Brand
#Mobile
#THINKMarketing
#Marketing
#InfluencerMarketing
#PowerofPrecision
#B2B
#Law #SocialMedia
#Tips
Juntae DeLane @JuntaeDeLane
Founder of Digital Branding Institute, speaker, blogger, podcaster, influencer, consultant. He uses #digitalbranding as main weapon of choice. His list of favorite hashtags include:
#digitalbranding
#socialmedia
#branding
#quote
#truth
#podcast
#contentmarketing
#smm
#mobile
#seo
#smallbiz
#b2b
Michelle Killebrew @shellkillebrew
TEDx speaker, Senior Marketing Executive, Digital Technologist, Marketing, technology and Ecommerce Expert. Her Tweets are very popular and she reaches her audience using:
#Digital
#AdTech
#MarTech
#Quote
#DesignThinking
#cmo
#Leadership
#Advertising
#Technology
#Digital #Transformation
#CMOs
Karol Pokojowczyk @KarolPokojowczy
CEO of Colibri IO, river, and AirTweets, inbound marketer, social media expert, programmer, tech expert, and growth hacker. He reaches his audience using these hashtags:
#startups
#metrics
#inbound
#SocialMedia
#growth
#SaaS
#ContentMarketing
#Instagram
#GrowthHacker
#GrowthHacking
#inboundmarketing
#content
#VisualMarketing
Tamara McCleary @TamaraMcCleary
Brand influencer, top CMO, social media expert, CEO of Thulium, top technology expert. Her favorite hashtags are connected to modern technologies:
#Leadership
#Inspiration
#Quote
#Cybersecurity
#Datascience
#DataMining
#MachineLearning
#BigData
#Statistics
#Cloud
#Technology
#AR #AI
#FutureMaker
#WomeninTech
#IoT
#robotics
Morten Middelfart @dr_morton
Founder of Lumina Analytics, Social Quant, Big Data and Machine Learning fan, inventor, CIO. He addresses his audience with the following hashtags:
#Twitter
#Startup
#Leads
#Marketers
#GrowthHacking
#Business
#ContentMarketing
#BigData
#Webinar
#Entrepreneur
Steve Cartwright @FX_Digital
Expert Content Marketer, consultant, website designer, conversion rate and optimization expert. He’s very focused with his favorite hashtags which include:
#marketing
#contentmarketing
#socialmedia
#onlinemarketing
#infographic
#socialmedia #marketing
Tami Cannizzaro @tamicann
Social media , mobile, ecommerce and digital business expert and advocate hers is one of the best marketing accounts you can follow. Marketing VP at Oracle. If you want to address a similar audience, you can take inspiration from the hashtags she often uses:
#Marketing
#AdWeek
#Ecommerce
#Retailrers
#business #trends
#SocialMedia
Gerry Moran @GerryMoran
Content Marketing and Social Media rockstar, speaker, strategist, social selling and personal brand expert, the mind behind Marketing Think. He targets small and mid sized businesses with hashtags such as:
#socialselling
#contentmarketing
#socialmedia
#smallbiz
Krista Neher @KristaNeher
CEO of Boot Camp Digital, Social Media Trainer, marketing expert, author, entrepreneur and TEDx speaker. She often uses hashtags like:
#seo #strategy
#SocialMedia
#BlogStrategy
#Infographic
#DigitalMarketing
#TwitterMarketing
Bobby Umar @raehanbobby
Author, blogger, writer, TV Host, 4x TedX speaker, Personal Brand and Networking expert, coach. He just uses a few hashtags which are strictly connected to his areas of expertise and address business owners:
#Leadership
#entrepreneurs
#quote
#infographic
#business #strategy
Diana Adams @adamsconsulting
Tech journalist, brand ambassador, entrepreneur, Twitter pro, Apple specialist and consultant. She’s extremely successful on Twitter using hashtags like:
#Tech
#career
#futureofwork
#infographics
#blogging
#SocialMedia
#InternetofThings
#BigData
#Entrepreneur
Glen Gilmore @GlenGilmore
Top Social Media specialist, digital marketing, technology, IoT and digital transformation expert, consultant and speaker. He uses highly specific and original hashtags like:
#cmo
#smm
#InfluencerMarketing
#Snapchat
#socialmedia
#virtualreality #vr
#ai #ar
#wearables
#travel
#cybersecurity
#IoT
#digitalmarketing
#3dPrinting
#AugmentedReality
#SocialMediaMarketing
#DigitalTransformation
Adel de Meyer @AdeldMeyer
Brand Ambassador, Tech expert, Social Media and social media automation specialist, social media coach. She addresses her target group with these hashtags:
#smm
#Business
#quotestoliveby
#socialmedia
#entrepreneur
#tech
#innovation
#PersonalBrand
#VR
#smallbiz
#PowerofPrecision
#DigitalMarketing
#Marketing
#MarketingBooks
#InfluencerMarketing
Pat Flynn @PatFlynn
Online business expert, speaker, blogger, podcast celebrity, the mind behind Passive Income. He knows how to leverage the power of emojii but doesn’t use hashtags very often. However, when he does he uses some very emotional tags like:
#gratitude
#blessed
#mentorship
#podcast
#emailmarketing
And finally yours truly :D
Andy Mura @andy_mura
Responsible for Inbound Operations at Userlane. Founder of swarmcontent , Holigy, QF... Consultant, speaker, brand ambassador, in love with everything that contains the words Google, advertising and Content Marketing.
My favorite hashtags:
#contentmarketing
#inboundmarketing
#marketing
#startups
#smallbiz #smb
#smm #socialmedia
#CX #UX #CustomerJourney
#digitaltransformation #digitization
#digitalmarketing #onlinemarketing
#leadgen #leadgeneration
#growthhacking
#IoT
#BigData
#analytics
#smallbusiness
#entrepreneurship
#tech
#cro
#vc
#BizTalk
Are there any hashtags which are totally new to you? Any surprises? What are your favorite hashtags?
