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For apartment marketing veterans, hashtags may seem like a silly trend that’s bound to eventually fizzle out. But given their use and popularity among Millennials – the primary target demographic for today’s apartment marketers – it should be quite clear that ignoring hashtags is a huge mistake that could cost you a ton of leads. Here’s a quick look at why hashtags are important and how you can use them most effectively.

Why Hashtags are Important for Apartment Marketing

Hashtags are important because they allow you to spread your messaging to new audiences.

It’s that simple.

When a certain topic is trending, social media users who are interested in that topic will search for hashtags related to that topic. Conducting such a search allows users to stay current on relevant news stories or engage with other users who share similar interests. If your community has some way to contribute to a trending topic, using hashtags in your social media posts gives you exposure to audiences that otherwise may not have known about you.

Let’s use a Respage social post as an example.

Over the summer, headlines were abuzz with news of Cecil the Lion’s death. The resulting fallout caused Cecil’s shooter, a once prominent dentist, to permanently close his practice due to a slew of negative online reviews. At this point, Respage published an article on our blog that highlighted how quickly negative reviews can terminate a business, using the trending story as an example. We then tweeted about the post using a Cecil the Lion hashtag. Within the first few hours, our on-site analytics showed that the post had already become one of our most commonly viewed articles that month.

What’s the Best Way to Use Hashtags?

Obviously, your hashtags should be timely when covering a story like the one referenced in the example above. Using a Cecil the Lion hashtag to promote an article about online reviews today wouldn’t make sense. But timeliness isn’t the only thing to consider when using hashtags. The number of hashtags used is important, as well.

To get the most engagement out of your tweets, it’s recommended that you stick to one or two hashtags. Studies have proven that tweets with hashtags receive twice the amount of engagement when compared to posts without hashtags. However, the same studies suggest a 17 percent drop in engagement for posts with more than two hashtags.

#Conclusion

Using hashtags is a great way to expose your posts to more people and drive more traffic to your blog or site, but it’s important to know the limits. Experiment with some of the tactics highlighted above to discover what gets the best results. Or, if you don’t have time to manage social media on your own, look into our social media services for apartment communities to get a fully-managed solution.