Have you heard of the concept of hashtags? I remember them where we're pound signs. Remember that? And you don't do this and you don't say hashtag out loud according to my teenager. So today we're going to talk about hashtags for business owners, the do's and don'ts and how to find the right ones to bring more traffic to your website. No, I'm not playing tic-tac-toe. I'm actually talking about hashtags today. Hashtag. Anyone roll their eyes when they hear the word hashtag? Yeah, I get a lot of that, especially when I speak to CEOs and business owners are like, what the heck is a hashtag? Some of us knew it as a pound sign, but now it's a hashtag. And if you really want to embarrass your teenagers, just do this or say hashtag out loud, it's wonderful. My son wanted bottle service for two years, so there has to be a little bit of payback at some point, right? Anyway, love you Kyle. Anyway, so what we want to think about is what the heck is a hashtag and why should I care? A hashtag is like a party. There's a lot of different parties I want to go to, but I don't know which party, but I like a lot of different parties. So I want to follow my favorite things are rose gold. So I'm going to find the rose gold party, the Earl Grey Tea party, and the London party. I love all of those things. Now, I don't necessarily attach one single person to those concepts. I just want to watch everything that happens under that keyword. Let me show you. I'm going to show you on my computer here. When you come here, I'm going to type in hashtag rose gold. Now, you'll see here that rose gold has 5,923,000 posts for the word rose gold. So I'm going to click on that. Now, I'm going to follow this. Do you see what I'm following that? It's not following anyone specifically, but I'm following the concept or the party theme. And you'll see all of this is all about everything crazy rose gold. Now, I'm going to go back and I'm going to type in hashtag Earl Grey. So Earl Grey has 613,000 posts. So what you're tapping into here, guys, is you're tapping into, that's how people think. This is what they search for. So there is 613,000 posts for Earl Grey. Now, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to click on that. Now, I'm going to follow that hashtag. So no matter what topic is out there, whether it be SEO, keywords, social media, or just things that you love, you're going to get the exact thing. So I'm going to put in unicorn. You'll see here, unicorn has 12 million posts. Now, as a business owner, what that tells you is that people think that's interesting. So if you have a unicorn something or a rose gold something or whatever it is you have, there is a hashtag for that. Now, here's the cool thing is hashtags work across all different social platforms now. It used to be just Twitter and Instagram, but now they work in Facebook. They work in LinkedIn. They work in Pinterest. They work in Instagram. And so we want to think and Twitter, of course. So once you find your hashtag, then you can use it in all of your posts across all of your social media platforms. Now, you may be wondering, well, what hashtags that I'd be using and how many? The rule of thumb is an Instagram. It's about 10 hashtags. Now, I wouldn't use that many in all the other platforms, but the hashtags are really very strong in an Instagram environment. But then if we look at, okay, I'm going to do hashtag SEO, hashtag getfound, hashtag keyword rule, hashtag girl boss, hashtag solopreneur. And I have the same group of hashtags I use in all my posts. And then I add more based on whatever the topic is of that post. So as you're going through, now I use a tool here called hashtagify. And hashtagify will let you know what are the trending concepts, what are the trending hashtags, as well as what kind of suggestions of content should I be using around those hashtags. So I can come in here and I can type in hashtag SEO. Okay, so what you'll see that what this does is it says, okay, the results for SEO, I'm going to scroll down. You'll see here that the popularity is 80.7. And let's see, the week trend is up by 1%. And now you'll see that I can see in this word cloud, if I'm going to be using hashtag SEO, I need to use hashtag Google, hashtag marketing, hashtag SEM, hashtag social media, hashtag digital marketing. So I will grab that and make sure that when we are posting on social media, we are using the current trending hashtags around that one concept. And hashtagify does a great job of helping you to understand what is the current cloud, if you will, around that one keyword phrase. If I scroll down, it will give you all different kinds, the languages, the spelling variants, as well as the top countries that are using that, as well as some recommended influencers. So it's always a good idea when you're watching a hashtag. If you see an influencer, someone you admire, someone who has great content, make sure to follow them, as well as make sure to comment and like their posts. Very important that you are engaged person in your community, and it's not just I'm just posting, posting, posting. And you want to really be a part of the community. So for me, I watch search engine strategies. I have a, MAUS of course. MAUS is a great community of SEO experts. And I also go in and just follow certain entities that I really feel strongly about. And I know they know their stuff. And those are the hashtags I watch. And I also go in and based on those hashtags, I find my peeps. Right? I want to hang out with my hood. In the hood, I want to find my peeps in the hood. And I have to find where is it that I need to be. And who do I want to be seeing hanging out with? And a hashtag is just a big party. You can have, finally, you can go to as many parties as you want. And you'll feel totally comfortable in every single party, also known as a hashtag. Hashtag, right? Hopefully you're not annoyed or rolling your eyes anymore about the importance of hashtags. If you like this content, you might want to consider coming to one of my Findability retreats. We call them workcations. We work hard and we play hard. We have them every quarter. So check out our website at findability.com slash retreat. You'll see our next event. And you can bring a guest for free.