How Travel Hashtags Can Help To Gain More Exposure For Your Business

Hashtags are something we commonly see on social media but rarely understand the strategy behind using them.

To start with, let’s discuss what a hashtag is and what it does.

The definition of a hashtag is ‘a metadata tag’ or another fancy name for a link or connection which allows users to easily search terms that interest them and, therefore, finding content related to this term. On the plus side, this tag makes your business’ content searchable, discoverable and helps growing your following or engagement organically.

They always begin with, you guessed it, the pound key or hashtag (#), and cannot include symbols or spaces but you can use capital letters or lowercase letters.

Sounds simple, right? Well, they are – when you know how to put them into best practice!

When it comes to hashtags you can use a mix of personalised ones that are tailored to your business and its the services or products, a business name is the perfect example of a branded hashtag e.g. #ATDW. Then there are industry-specific hashtags like ‘#tourism’, ‘#travel’, and ‘#hike’ which are all niche to the industry, category or the service/offering.

Finding the best industry hashtags for your content is really quite simple, so we’ve put together some things to consider when starting to use hashtags:

• Look at other industry pages, your audience, and even your competitors to see what tags they used on some of their most engaged posts
• Research the engagement on the hashtags you think you want to use. See how many other posts there are and what the commentary on them has been. Make sure there is no negative commentary on the hashtag so there is no association with it and you
• When you find a hashtag that has good engagement and is niche enough, use the Instagram and twitter tools built into the platforms to find related tags. These tools are there to help you understand what other tags are often on posts

In the tourism industry, there is an abundance of beautiful, fun and descriptive, niche hashtags to help describe the services, events, locations and, experiences. In your next Facebook post, Instagram post, twitter post and even blog try adding some hashtags to the end of your captions and look at your analytics to understand if there was an increase in traffic and what hashtags had a part to play.

Here are some top tips for using hashtags:

Make sure the hashtags you choose match what is detailed in the image or content. For example, you wouldn’t use #beach or #sunset if it doesn’t feature a picture of a sunrise or beach or the content doesn’t talk about beach sunrises!

Keep them short, clear and concise so that if you do create a trending tag, people will be easily able to use them in their captions.

On LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, less is more! Ten hashtags maximum will be more than enough to help you get exposure but won’t look messy. Whereas with Instagram, make sure you use the most of the maximum of 30, but always place them as a first comment on your post to avoid your caption getting buried in the clutter.

And don’t forget to let us know what happens after using these tips or more importantly, hashtags!