How to Use Hashtags Successfully as a Financial Advisor

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Here are four ways financial advisors can make use of hashtags:

1. Improve Searchability: Make it easier for people to find your post

2. Demonstrate Awareness or Join a Conversation: Provide commentary on events or trending topics

3. Establish Brand Identity: Create a hashtag for yourself

4. Target a Specific Audience: Use the hashtags that your target audience would follow I

In order to maximize effectiveness, be sure to follow these hashtag best practices! - Don't Overdo It: Use a max of three hashtags on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter - Put Hashtags at the Bottom of a Post - Capitalize Different Words

Related: The Six Biggest Marketing Opportunities for Financial Advisors in 2021

Transcript:

Are you a bit confused about hashtags?  You're not the only one. So today, I am going to walk, specifically for my financial advisor friends, walk you through what hashtags are, the different ways you can use them, and then also some best practices to  absolutely keep in mind when on social media.  

Hi everyone, I'm Samantha Russell from Twenty  Over Ten and let's jump right in. . .

So again, a hashtag, if you're not familiar, is the little  hash sign with a word next to it that is clickable on different social media platforms. Now these  have been around pretty much since the start of social media, so for years and years, but for many people I find they either don't understand what they're used for or how to use them  effectively to grow your social media presence, especially for your brand, for your business. So,  let's talk first about four different ways that you can use hashtags. So the first one is just to  improve searchability, to improve how many people are going to find your post on social media. So  for instance, if I am going to post something  that is going to help all of my friends that are financial advisors with their marketing, I can use  the hashtag wealthmanagement, and anyone who is  going to click on the wealthmanagement hashtag would end up finding this post. Now you'll notice  that I didn't say I'm going to use the hashtag  digitalmarketing, and that's because most of the  financial advisors I work with do not actually follow or use the digitalmarketing hashtag.  But, of course, they're going to use ones like wealthmanagement, financialplanning, because that's pertinent to their area of expertise.  

So think about what your audience is following, what hashtags that they would be following, and use those hashtags- not necessarily the hashtag of  what your content is about. Okay, number two. The second way you can use a hashtag is to be aware  of what's going on or join in on a conversation.  

This is really true with events or things that  are trending topics. So for instance, whenever there's big conferences that are going on, every  conference or event will have a hashtag, and as you are posting about what you're doing at the  event, sessions you're going to, you can use the hashtag on your post so that others that are at  that event, when they click the hashtag, will see everybody's posts from the event. So again, use a  hashtag to join the conversation.

The third thing is establishing brand identity. So if you are  talking to people every week in your social feed about a particular topic or area of expertise, you  can give yourself a hashtag that you use on all your posts, so anyone who wants to see all of your  content can click on the hashtag you've made up, and all of your content will be there. So here's a great example from our friend Jeanne Fisher, she has created the hashtag 401klady for herself, and so when you click that, you're going to see all of her great posts that are specific  for plan sponsors about 401(k)s.

Alright, moving on to number four. You can use it to  target a specific audience. So going back up to number one, people that are following a specific  hashtag, you can use this to target them in your  post. Because the algorithm knows that "John Smith" is following the hashtag wealthmanagement, and so if I use that hashtag on my post, he's a  little bit more likely to see my content than not.  

Now keep in mind, there are some best  practices when it comes to using hashtags. So those are the four ways you can use them,  but let's talk about best practices. So you do not want to put a million hashtags on every single post. It looks cluttered, it looks clunky, and it doesn't really help the algorithm, right?  The algorithm wants to know: what is your content about, who are you trying to target? And if you put a million different options, it doesn't help them filter it anymore.

So instead, try to not use  more than three hashtags per post when you're on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. Now Instagram is a little bit different. I know many of you aren't using Instagram, so we're not going to  go there today, but for LinkedIn, for Facebook,  or for Twitter, try not to use more than three hashtags per post. The other thing you can do is sort of push the hashtags down so that they're at the bottom of the post and not cluttering up the content of what you're writing, so it's easier for people to read.

Also, if your hashtag has more than one word- so if it's "financial planning"-  capitalize the first letter of each word, even though they're all kind of bunched together, that way it's easier to read what the actual hashtag is.

So those are some best practices on how to use  hashtags and also different ways you can use them. For more social media tips, for more digital  marketing tips on how to grow your business in this next year, make sure you subscribe  to Twenty Over Ten's YouTube channel, and let us know if this was helpful  to you in the comments or if you have another question about hashtags that we have  not answered, we'd be happy to help you.