Simple social media idea almost no community or downtown EVER does
By Gregg McLachlan
Your Town Rising
If every downtown, every BIA, every tourism or economic development department thought like their audiences who use social media, they’d know one of the most common questions people have when they post a photo to Instagram.
What hashtags do I use?
Writing our content for our posts is easy. Choosing which hashtags to use takes time.
If we are discovering an amazing town in, say, small-town Alberta, we might include the hashtags #ExploreAlberta #travelalberta #alberta in our post on Instagram. But how do these hashtags connect us to the small town that we’re in? Aren’t there any local-specific hashtags created by locals that can better help us specifically reach the local shops and folks?
None of us have a clue. It’s a mystery.
So let’s face it. We guess. We make up some hashtags, not even knowing if they are useful, exist or are popular. It’s often a spur of the moment decision which hashtag to use. OK, maybe there is one ‘local’ hashtag that we remember because we saw a friend use it. Or maybe it’s the one that the local tourism account on Twitter or Instagram always uses. But we all know, we use more than one hashtag.
Hashtags are how we find amazing places, connect with other like-minded people, and get our content in front of more eyeballs that are interested in the same things. They are also how we tag the great experiences we enjoy.
Which leads us to today’s questions: Why aren’t we making it easy for our local audiences to choose hashtags? Is it really better that they are going to hashtag apps and punching in random words to get the best 30 generic hashtags used on planet Earth? Um, the world has almost eight billion people.
Probably not a great local solution.
Some people will keep using hashtag apps. But others — those enthusiastic community boosters that exist in every small town — always crave more ways to amplify local. Oh yeah, that same ‘local, local, local’ that the local tourism department keeps promoting.
So, here’s a zero-cost way to help your audience. And it is a solution to a problem (see above, again, if you need a refresher).
Create your own official HASHTAG list. It will contain local specific hashtags and some that are more regional in scope. Put it on your website, and make it easy to cut and paste. Promote it. Tell your audiences how easy it is to grab the list and start using it in posts. Start talking up how this helps everyone grow followers and connect around a like-minded list of hashtags.
The problems we’ve had for years is that tourism and economic development departments and downtowns have been very singular in their thinking revolving around hashtags. Many have one. Far more have none. If we think like our audiences, we’d wake up fast and realize they use many hashtags and often wing it as they create a post.
Start helping them! Create a cut and paste hashtag list!