What the hell is a hashtag and how do you use it? | Ep. #13

[smart_track_player url=”https://craftthinking.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ep13-hashtags-1.mp3″ image=”https://craftthinking.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Antwerpen-Serve.jpg” social_linkedin=”true” social_email=”true” twitter_username=”craftthinking” ]

Today we’re drinking Guinness Antwerpen Stout. Who knew that Guinness made more than one type of beer? We’re also talking about what the hell is a hashtag and how do you use it? Hashtags have the power to make or break your social media account. Listen to our favorite strategies.

Time Stamped Show Notes

• 0:00 – Review Guinness Antwerpen Stout
• 8:26 – Jumping into what a hashtag is
• 9:38 – Hashtags on Facebook
• 11:06 – Pros and Cons of Hashtags
• 13:00 – Hashtags on Instagram
• 13:40 – Instagram’s 60 hashtags per post hack
• 18:22 – Instagram shadowban
• 20:27 – Hashtags on Twitter
• 21:24 – Back to Hashtags on Instagram
• 22:44 – Resources to research hashtags

The question of the episode!

What is the best hashtag campaign you’ve seen?

Resources

Google is your friend. Research hashtags for X industry

Crowdfireapp.com – Helps you build your social media following and provides hashtag suggestions.

Websta.me – Free analytics for your Instagram account and provides most popular hashtags for different industries.

Hashtag.org

Hashtagify.me

Beer Review

Find us on Untappd! We’ve created a group called Craft Thinking. See what we’ve tasted and ask to join to share your drink reviews!

Guinness Antwerpen Stout

 

Thanks for Listening!

To share your thoughts:

• Leave a note in the comment section below.
• Tweet about it!
• Reach out to us on Instagram

To help out the show:

• Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and we read each one.
• Subscribe on iTunes, Android, or Stitcher.

Transcription of the episode

Automated so excuse the errors!

00:03 Hey, this is episode number 13. You’re listening to craft thinking. I am Nealey and I am BGC. I am digging that intro love it, let’s roll with it, but today we’re talking about what the hell is that Hashtag and how do you actually use a hashtag through the three most important social media sites, twitter, instagram, and facebook. So you’re saying this is the millennial episode, the, the millennial episode. I mean, I am a millennial myself. Proud of it. I think of myself as a said next breed of millennials like that different. I don’t know. We always have to think of my age range. I’m considered like of the older millennials. I think right now it’s people between like a certain age, 35. I’m 31 years old, so technically I’m a millennial. I think it’s like 39 right now. You’re freaking kidding me? No, they open it up because I had a buddy that like talk shit about millennials and I looked it up. It’s like, hey buddy, you’re a millennials in a uh, it’s, it’s a term that’s to go into it, but it’s ridiculous how people are just blaming everything on millennials these days. Like all totally screwing things up. Really. Did they vote? The people in the office that’s screwed over economy. This has, they were not legal voting age at the time.

01:28 But I digress. I digress. What are we drinking? Beer everyone. If you don’t, you’re a liar. That is true. Uh, this one I didn’t even know this existed and I follow this company pretty well. This is by Guinness and no, this is not the Guinness Stout. I knew the Guinness Stout existed. Stupid millennials. The new Guinness existed. Uh, this is their stout. Now. What makes this a little different is that Guinness is typically like a four percent alcohol. Now this is a stout and it is eight percent alcohol, but it also is not nitrile based, which Guinness Stout is normally narrow base. In fact they’ve revolutionized nitrile. The ones that came out with a specific way of pouring it on the specific tap part that actually makes natural work well on draft. I’m going to take a sip while I’m doing that. Justin, what do you think of it? Because you’re, you’re, you’re studying this bottle and very took a sip. I’m picking a couple sips. It’s, it’s weird. It’s like it’s not bad, but it’s different. It’s not what I expect from. It seems to me like Guinness. It takes with the creaminess of it. Okay. Yeah. Now eight percent. I can’t taste this. Draw me off. Um, so I, I, I’m actually, I’m a little biased when it comes to get us

03:02 a little known fact, but I asked with it, this would be my fun fact

03:10 to Northern Ireland for two and a half months. I opened. They are costing out there and so I got to actually, I’m hanging out with people that live there and actually get the real experience that Northern Ireland in Ireland are not the same thing. One is owned by the UK, one is owned by the Republic of Ireland. So I was in Northern Ireland, but they take Guinness very seriously up there. In fact if you say, Hey, go to this pub, the question they always ask, how’s the Guinness? And if you can’t answer it, they won’t go to the pub it, they’re that serious about it. Went down to southern Ireland and I took the connoisseur tour, private tour of the, uh, of the Guinness Brewery and we tried to try every Guinness beer they’ve ever made, which this at the time wasn’t being made because it wasn’t a part of it. I’m how to pour my own Guinness, all that stuff. And when I went over there and then shrinking against I’m like, is not different Ireland’s us until I flew back to the US and get us over here and I went, Oh God, this is horrible. It’s not the same as it is in Ireland. Felt like such a snob. Millennials snobs.

04:17 Millennials. That’s going to be the theme of the episode or I’ll fucking millennials. It’s good. It just throws me off because it’s again, it’s because you think of like, just that the one Guinness. Um, so it’s throwing me off. It’s not bad, but it’s from me are probably picking up more that bitter taste on the back end. Right. Do you take on the. It kind of lingers and that’s because you don’t have the nitro which gives the creamy flavor to it. You’re getting actually more of that dark chocolate, bitter flavor.

04:47 Let’s get on pallets here, so I might be wrong or I may have just had this moment of just clarity and genius with my palate. I feel very special.

04:56 You gotta roll with it, man in Antwerp and I’ll give it like a seven on this one. It’s just, it’s throwing me off. It may be higher three point five because our last one,

05:08 those founders and that and that was phenomenal, so I’m gonna have to give this a lower one. I could definitely see a seven or seven point five on this. I would say try this beer out.

05:19 Yeah, it’s a posts on my facebook. When you think about it, I’m very curious about how people respond to this Guinness with how people are typically dedicated. Their current flavor. Honestly, I love any kind of conversation towards the beers were having a beer and business, which doesn’t really happen. I don’t think I’m ever does happen. I just think people. Actually some of the best things have come up with the bars. American

05:44 revolution, when you talk about, like in Boston, they all met up bars and stuff like some of the greasy of the world started a bars and if you don’t, if you don’t believe me, Ben Franklin, that said that beer is proof that God exists. Loves us. So there you go. Now Justin, what’s your, what’s your fun fact for the day

06:01 before we get into the Hashtag topic? My Fun facts today is I almost died once. I’m probably being a little dramatic, but uh, so I used to live in Florida and there was much of hurricanes, Hurricane Charlie and specific category five, a pretty, pretty serious stuff. But we survived it. Little damage to our house thankfully, but it destroyed like the little forest around us. So we as kids, I think I was like 12 or 13. Uh, we’d go in a, we break the, these vines that are hanging on the trees and we swing across the vines like 30 feet up in the air. We’re kids were dumb. That was fun as hell. A, we go climb a tree we’re doing around this one. We kept going. We were out there for like an hour and then I went again. So I go, I get it, I run really quick off this tree branch.

06:49 I go and it snaps and I’m flying through the air, the air out and all under me is just broken trees and stuff. So I’m like, fuck, I’m done. This is it. I’ve had a good lead run, alright. But thankfully I landed in a Bush that kind of saved me. There was two broken tree logs next to me that was like kind of housing the Bush that grew over. So luckily I survived. So that’s my fun fact. I used to swing on vines and almost died once I was the modern day. Tarzan apparently, um, I don’t think any two policemen in hurricane, but, you know, I will say time to get a little serious note. Uh, my heart goes out to

07:30 all those other places had been affected by hurricanes this season. You know, most recently a Puerto Rico. Maybe another one happens before this actually happens, but you know, if you can do anything for any of these places that have been struck with these hurricanes, do it volunteer, donate money, donate food, just make sure it’s legitimate organization. There are people that still have water, so a lot of power. Let’s take care of these people.

07:54 It gets rough. Like I was, I, I count myself as blessed, but I was still without power and electricity and all that stuff for 35 days in the summer.

08:02 That’s insane. That’s in Florida. I didn’t even know the big. It was a big deal right now.

08:07 America live without power for 35 days. Like the Red Cross was coming around there, their trucks and giving out these packs. You like broke and they like, they heated it up and then that was our meal. Nobody can work. But yeah, a fun fact ran a little long. But uh, but what are we actually talking today about? Talking about hashtags? Um, you know, suicide, suicide

08:31 thinking Hashtag. And we can go on and on and on. And here’s the deal. I eat hash tags. So we’re talking to you about, this was about, about craft thinking, just because it’s not something I identify with doesn’t mean we don’t talk about it, right? Cause here’s, you know, here’s where I’m at. I got my, I’ve got a couple of friends on facebook and they do this like posts of like, oh, you’re on doing this. And then they have 30 hashtags and that bothers the hell out of me. So

09:00 yeah,

09:00 maybe we’ll start with a place that maybe hashtags it shouldn’t be on facebook and then we’ll work to things where maybe it should be on like maybe twitter and how to do that. Right? So you don’t piss people like me off your consumer.

09:11 Sure, exactly right. So for those of you guys that don’t know what a Hashtag is, it’s a, basically it’s a pound sign or hash sign if you’re a overseas, uh, and it’s to kind of get a word or a phrase like can quickly search it. So if you hashtag don’t sue us, you can click that or search that and see everyone’s talking about Hashtag. Don’t sue us quick search repository to find that information. Uh, Brian was talking about facebook, you really shouldn’t do hashtags on facebook, facebook, facebook. The more hashtags you use, the actual less engagement. You guys get a, we did a post about it on our side and craft thinking. You just search hashtags. You should find it right there. Uh, but it goes over the more hashtags to use on facebook specifically. The less engagement you actually get. The whole point of hashtags in general is to help you guys reach and reach markets that you wouldn’t normally hit. That if our user. And I really like craft beer, I would search for like Hashtag craft beer and I would see all these posts about craft beers. I can kind of get the little, get information about that subject and in detail. But again, facebook, as brandon was saying, like, you guys can’t do it. It’s just don’t. There’s other ways to build that. Occasionally we’ll go over another episode, just just don’t do it. Kill the fire. Facebook is not the place for Hashtag [inaudible].

10:30 It seemed like they didn’t want to embrace it. Hashtags for a long time. Like he got huge on twitter and facebook drag their feet on getting young in the first place. I think they need that. This is not, this is the platform for it. They do it because they’re forced to. I am not speaking for Zuckerberg Hashtag don’t sue us because you have way too hyper scalers. Uh, you know, and that’s the thing that bothers me when I’m on facebook. I’m the only who’s hashtags. So

10:55 what would,

10:56 which do you want to focus on to focus on instagram? Where do you want to focus on, on twitter here?

11:01 Well, kind of both. I, I kinda remember before we really jump into that, I want to talk about the pros and cons of hashtags and hashtags on instagram and twitter. You want to be on both. You want to do both. There is a little bit different methodology towards it, but the actual, like the pros of Hashtags, obviously the more hashtags you use that in theory, the larger reach you have because you’re going to hit these different people that are searching for specific hashtags and if you have a bigger reach than theoretically you’re going to hit those markets. You’re all set. You can also create your own like brand around hashtags themselves. Like Nike had a stint of just do it. How should I just do it? It makes sense where we’re kind of building our brand and our community around craft thinking. Like if you tag hashtag craft thinking on your post and you and you’re really embodying what craft thinking means of kind of being unique and having that idea, being creative.

11:56 Hashtag craft thinking. It’s a verb is what you do, but you can make it your own brand and that way anything tagged to your brand, you can kind of build that community behind and go from there. Also guys, um, I don’t know if you know this, but like twitter and Google’s, they actually show up on search engine results. How do they show up on search results? Walk me through that real quick. So Google has actually a partnership with twitter. Google plus is Google, so they kind of have favoritism there. But um, it’s, it’s starting to show relevant information because Google understands that information on social, some of it, not all of it, uh, is relevant to some people’s searches. Twitter is a great source for real time information with, with anything that happens. Like there’s some major news event or something happens. Twitter’s like the forefront of everything.

12:44 It’s almost becoming its own search engine. And those hashtags help find that relevant information that twitter has. This is what’s called trending hashtags, so it’s showing what the most popular hashtags are going on to let where like Hurricane Harvey and all these other things like their tragic events, but everyone was talking about it. So those hashtags are trending and you can really join in on those conversations by easily finding those hashtags. So those are kind of the couple of things. But like, but console I kinda really want to talk about too, because hashtags there blessing and a curse. It’s one of those things where too much of a good thing or bad thing, you overdo it and people will be turned away by it. Yeah. So yeah, we do it wrong and it’s something that’s. It could be a good thing to do it the wrong way.

13:35 Instagram, instagram prohibits you from have for having too many hashtags. They cap it at 30. There is a hack. I’m going to explain it here. Um, I preface with test it out and see if it works for you. And it’s not going to work for like 95 percent of people that you can actually put 60 hashtags in instagram posts. And the way you do that is you create your caption of whatever it is you leave out any hashtags. You go to, your comments, you add your 30 hashtags you want to do when you go back and edit your post and you can add 30 more hashtags. Cs, 60 total hashtags, which is fucking overkill. Seems like if I see that it’s the, uh, the drastic part quote, um, just because you. Oh, what was it? You know what I’m talking about? So the Jurassic park quote like you were so productive but preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn’t stop to think if you should like we can do it, but should we do it? That’s the thing I gave you this, the tactic of you guys can do 60 hashtags. I’ve tested it, yes, it gets you a ton of engagement, but it’s not real engagement at the end of the day and it just looks awful. I didn’t want posts and I was like, this is not for me. Yeah.

14:52 When I think of the simpsons where homer went to this, I remember the Chili Festival, I’m not too sure, but he deep fried his shirt and he said, see marge, you can deep deep shirt. You were wrong. She goes, I didn’t say you couldn’t do it. You shouldn’t do it. Just say it right. One hundred percent. So yeah, instagram, 60 hashtags is ridiculous. I don’t usually get you much. Anything

15:15 guys with, uh, with hashtags itself, like you can skew results. So it’s, it’s data analytics. It’s what I live for. Like with anything like you have to be able to understand what your data is, what your analytics are and how was actually driving whatever your apis are, your key performance indicators and but if you use it a ton of Hashtags, it’s users results in a couple ways. There are people that go and find hashtags and just like a shit ton of stuff and then their bots and then there are people that don’t actually do anything, so a lot of your comments aren’t actually real watery legs aren’t actually real. The marina followed, you’re getting aren’t real, so it’s really hard to really gauge that.

15:53 That’s when I say gaming, the algorithm does it even for us in the short term, if you kill in a long term, I believe that when you in a business it’s not about the results about the behaviors because the behaviors will drive the results. If you are focused on bad or unethical behavior, eventually in the short term or mid term even you are is going to be found out and you will be punished for it. Are you focused on the right behaviors to drive the organic growth you need? You’re setting yourself up for long term success. Just like with so many things in business, do it the right way. This hole that I just can’t get behind someone doing 60 hashtags in opposed to get her on their algorithm. Does it for a reason. It’s owned by facebook. They know how marketing works. If they put a limit on it, it’s for a reason.

16:46 One hundred percent. And also guys like anything like we say or recommend, please test it for yourself. Like someone told me about the 60 hashtags so I had to test it for myself to see if it was effective or if it was an effective. If it was really beneficial for my brand and like I, I tested it for our account and I found that it wasn’t. I can’t be, I can’t like just see something and say like it doesn’t work or doesn’t. It does work. I have to be a PR practitioner to be like, yeah, that works with anything. Like there’s so many naysayers, like facebook ads and shit like that. Oh, it doesn’t work, they’ve never fucking ran a facebook ad themselves, so they don’t know. So try it before you say anything that you have to make sure like it’s for you because what works for us might not work for you and what works for you might not work for us. Everyone is different.

17:36 Um, I’ll take job. His response. I don’t even try the 60 hashtag thing. We can disagree on it. I’d try it once. I don’t even if we to disagree on, it’s like doing black hat seo, if you do that is you’re trying to game instagram’s algorithm when you try to Google Google’s, I would, you know what happens, they make you pay. It may happen with instagram as well. I only just worth the risk. Um, but here’s the thing. Me and Justin, we can different opinion here and every week you’re going to do, we’re going to show up and record these episodes and we’re going to give you guys some perspective and sometimes they’ll be different.

18:15 Yeah. A big, big risk with doing the 60 hashtags is something called a shadow band I’ve ever heard of a shadow banned before BGC. It sounds actually cool to me. I kind of want to be shadow ban until you probably tell me what’s it about. You don’t want him to shut up, man. So basically what a shadow ban is. It’s an instagram only feature. Uh, you can do it a couple of ways if you’re, if you’re being portrayed as spammy, if you’re using bots are using a lot of the same hashtags over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Uh, you come shadow ban. And what that actually means is your, your post don’t actually show up on those hashtags feeds anymore. So if someone, someone, if we’re doing like kraft thinking, we get shadow banned, our posts are going to show if someone searches hashtag craft thinking anymore, which is detrimental to our small business or marketing or whatever it is, like you’re not going to show up on like anyone search results anymore, which is awful. Instagram doesn’t confirm nor deny it yet. They say instagram is functioning as normal when you questioned them, so you won’t actually know if you’re. You’re actually shadow bands, so it’s tough. The only way to really know if your shower band, it’s like, Hey, can you see you’re following my account? Are you on? Follow it and then search this Hashtag and then see if you can find me after I posted this thing like five seconds ago. That’s a pain in the ass when you use 60 hashtag.

19:35 Yeah, sure. Here’s how I want to say about hashtags. Hashtag guy. I think they’re stupid. I think they’re annoying. I think that’s how the hell did twitter to make that happen. But you know what? It comes down to it. If you are witty, if you’re creative, if you’re falling, if your brand, I’ll probably appreciate it. It’s just like that Hashtag. Just do it when they keep it out. I’m like, can’t be angry at them. That’s their brand. Just do it right. If you can make me laugh with the Hashtag, I will respond to it pretty well. As long as it fits with your branding statement. Guides fit with your brand and someone like me who’s bitter and actually can really like old, crotchety dude with these things will still appreciate what you’re doing.

20:20 So kind of want to jump back to a, to instagram and twitter. Twitter’s pretty brief. Um, when with using hashtags, you guys have a hundred and 40 characters. That’s it. Like the messages aren’t long at all. Most of your message should not be a Hashtag I shouldn’t see just do it. And then you to Hashtag around just all sorts of nonsense that don’t really make sense. Keep it simple. Twitter actually recommends two hashtags at most, most directly from twitter. Uh, no other random source from twitter itself. They say, Hey, two hashtags, Matt,

20:55 good to be specific towards your brand. You get too vague if no idea what’s to

20:58 actually working. So a lot of the hashtags we’re using on twitter, uh, are either a craft thinking or solo preneurs, like we’re trying to really target the, the solo printers out there that are really there. They’re going out there, they’re there by themselves, they’re running their business, they have employees or not there. It’s still on them, they don’t have partners, it’s all on them. So we’re trying to really help them out and get them to that next phase, that next step of the journey in regardless where they are going. That’s it. Instagram on the other hand, um, I kinda have mixed reviews on instagram. Hashtags have been a blessing and a curse. I’ve kind of tested it all, seeing what works, seeing what hasn’t worked. Um, and really my best recommendation is just to continue trying. So what I’ll do is I’ll use the, the Max 30 on a poster to then I’ll go down to two, then I’ll go to 10 and I’ll go to 20, then I’m going to two again. I kinda gauge it that way. Can see like when I do use to, well my actual engagement is and I wanted to ramp it up to like 20 or 30. I’m going for that growth and I’ll go back to two or three so I can see what my actual engagement is to with my followers, see if what I’m doing is effective. And if it’s not, then I kind of kind of reevaluate what I’m doing and say other other tactics.

22:11 Honestly to me looking at this, why I shouldn’t. It sounds exhausting to me. It’s a new type of marketing now in this up. So let’s, you guys can already tell just as the Hashtag expert, I’m not a justin and I, we both share the, this affinity for data and resources and quoting your shit, right? So to Justin, he’s the one that I’m going to ask him this question because I’m not qualified to. What are some resources people can use to research hashtags because you can’t just go based off this podcast. It’s very subtle, very specific. You need to do your research. Give us some, some resources here.

22:57 So I’ll give you guys a couple obviously, number one simple google, Google’s, your friend, research hashtags in whatever your industry is and we’ll give you some suggestions. Um, but past that, I’m a super big fan of crowded fire.me. Just from the kind of what it does, it helps you build your instagram following, basically go on and you sign up for free. Uh, you go and choose. Cool. I’m in these industries, I liked these keywords. I kind of followed these competitors, um, and kind of go from there. And then when you start to actually make your post, it’s going to give you about 50 or 60 I haven’t counted is specifically different hashtags in those industries. Have keywords that you’ve picked up from what I’ve tested, they’ve all given me pretty great results and it’s a free program to use and that’s probably my number one helping me grow some of my twitter followings in my instagram kind of pre schedule a bunch of stuff too.

23:49 We should go into a later episode. Um, but webster.me is a free analytics. It’s more analytics, but it helps you look at trending hashtags. Again, webster, W E, b, s t a.me, um, it’s going to show you. So if you search a tech industry or Hashtag, it’s going to see kind of who’s the top, who’s the top influencer and some of the top hashtags. It’s going to show you the most popular hashtags as well. I would treat that as what? Not to Hashtag. You guys don’t want to be littered in a field of just everyone using it because you will not stand out. Again, it Kinda goes back to creating a niche for yourself. You don’t want to use the most popular. Don’t want to have that big, big net. But in the ocean you want a smaller net, but in like a pond. So used what’s not popular. Um, what else we got here? A hashtags.org. It gives trending and popular. Hashtag Info that’s pretty legit. It’s free. That has it. Has a freemium. I probably wouldn’t use the premium. I mean, I personally don’t. It’s super expensive too and I don’t think it’s worth it.

24:57 Hashtag Osi. Hashtag don’t see what my opinions are. Mine and mine alone. And lastly, Hashtag me.

25:07 This creates like a little weird interactive type thing. A hashtag fi.me. Again, it’ll be in the show notes for you guys to reference later on. Just search Hashtag at crafting. You guys will find it there, but basically you’ll type whatever your industry is. So with us, uh, it’s kind of a weird industry because we’re kind of in everything. But say it do marketing will search marketing or solopreneur and they’ll give us the 10 hashtags related to that, click on another one of those 10 will give us 10 hashtags related to that, kind of go from there and they’ll give us top influencers or whatever Hashtag we actually search, which is big to kind of reach out to and have that conversation and kind of start it. Those are kind of my resources for kind of researching, going to Hashtags, bringing guys. Google is your friend research hashtags in x industry and look at a couple of the top results. They’re there for a reason. Google’s is them as their quality results

26:03 or Google Jimmy Fallon, Justin Timberlake, Hashtag [inaudible]. No, no, no, no, no, no. Uh, and that’s how I feel about hashtags. Uh, I think that’s a good way to research that. And it’s not by the way, but um, I think at this point we’re down to a question of the day. I mean, I have a question, but I laid on my am I going to play it on. Okay. What do you feel was the best hashtag campaign you seen from a company?

26:32 I like it. I like it a lot. Literally just came up with that. As you’re going through those real short resources, their hashtags. I feel like we shouldn’t like pre, pre scatter these, these questions we just come up with on the spot and go see these last couple ones have been

26:44 golden. It might be the eight percent alcohol in this Guinness interrupting. You know, which by the way, an easy drink for astout this heavy. I’ve really enjoyed it. Honestly. I have to. Antwerpen entropy. When is this going? Is it twerking guys and turpin sounds like a drawer itself is pharmaceutical, right? His from school beer. We had to get a prescription for this Hashtag. Hashtag. Hashtag a good stuff. Guess what guys? I’m neely and I’m BGC and this is craft thinking.