Categorizing tweets with the right hashtags can increase your visibility and spread awareness about your community. However, finding the right hashtags for your tweets isn’t always easy. There are a lot of different ways to promote the same message, which is why we built this brief guide to hashtags for apartment marketing. Provided below are four different hashtag types that could work for pretty much any tweet.
Trending Story Hashtags
News stories spread like wildfire on Twitter. And shortly after a story breaks, an appropriate newly coined hashtag will follow.
Although it’s fun to use trending hashtags to involve yourself in a public forum about a story, it’s best to tread lightly when doing so. These stories tend to get political very quickly, and you don’t want your political views to alienate potential renters. Think twice before posting something that could be construed as insensitive.
Local Hashtags
Local hashtags are used to promote stories about a local city or region. These tags provide a number of great opportunities for apartment marketing because they allow you to build awareness about your community among people who live in the area or are generally interested in the area.
It’s a smart strategy to use local hashtags to show solidarity with the region in which your community is based. If it’s Monday night and your city’s football team has a game, show your support for the team by posting a positive tweet and tagging it with an appropriate local hashtag.
General Hashtags
As you may have already guessed, general hashtags are tags that you can use whenever you want. You’re not restricted by your location or the day of the week. The only rule is that they have to be used in the right context.
One general hashtag that’s used by apartment communities quite frequently is #nomnom. This tag is food related, and you typically see it accompanied by an image related to dining. If you have any cross-promotional marketing partnerships with a local restaurant and want to help promote a certain special, using a general hashtag like #NomNom is a safe bet.
Weekly Hashtags
Weekly hashtags are recurring tags that you can use multiple times each month. These tags typically include the name of a given day of the week, and you should only use them on that day. Some examples include #ThrowbackThursday and #FridayReads.
One great social media marketing strategy for apartments is to use a weekly hashtag to promote a certain amenity in your community. If you have a gym or a pool, for example, you could take a picture of either amenity and pair it with #MondayMotivation, a tag that many people use for work and fitness goals. Using pet-related tags like #MeowMonday to promote a pet-friendly apartment is another good example.
The Unwritten Rules of Hashtags
Before you start plugging all the different hashtags identified above into your tweets, you should know that there are some unwritten rules regarding hashtag etiquette.
First off, it’s recommended that you never start a tweet with a hashtag. While there’s technically nothing wrong with the practice, some studies have suggested tweets that start with a hashtag result in lower engagement. The only exception to this rule seems to be when grammar dictates that the phrase within the hashtag precedes the rest of the tweet.
Second, you should never put more than three hashtags in a single tweet. Even if you have a character count surplus and can squeeze a few more tags into your post, you should avoid doing so. A tweet with too many hashtags seems like spam.
As long as you follow these two rules and ensure that the hashtags you choose are appropriate for the context of your tweet, you’re well on your way to increasing your visibility and building awareness of your community.