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Top 5 Hashtag Mistakes That Are Slowing Your TikTok Success

Social Media Marketing

We're grateful for the ways TikTok helps businesses and individuals promote their products and services and increase their profile among users. And as we discussed earlier in this post, hashtags are one of the great tools that can help entrepreneurs get noticed.

When you use hashtags, more people will be able to find your videos, which could result in more subscribers. However, it's easy to ruin your TikTok reputation by using them incorrectly.

In this post, our Nashville social media marketing experts have compiled a list of five common TikTok hashtag mistakes that could harm your growth on the platform. So, without further ado, let's get started!

Mistake #1: Making Use of Irrelevant Hashtags

random hashtags

Even though hashtags are a crucial component of TikTok's growth strategy, not all trending hashtags will be helpful for your brand or business. You want a large audience, but focusing on the wrong hashtags will lead you to people outside your target demographic, slowing your progress.

If you use hashtags that don't relate to your content, you'll attract people who aren't interested in what you have to offer, increasing your bounce rate and slowing down your growth.

We always advise our customers to avoid using the #FYP hashtag because it is widely used, even though it is entirely irrelevant. This hashtag is utterly useless for promoting your videos.

Simple Hack: Spy on your competitor's community to find out what hashtags they are using and what other strategies are helping their growth. Spying on competitors to learn their social media marketing strategies is acceptable, provided the information gained is used well.

Mistake #2: Ignoring Hashtags That Are Popular in Your Industry

On TikTok, the most widely used hashtags are consistently the most trendy ones. As a result, marketers often focus solely on trending hashtags, which can dilute the power of more community-oriented hashtags.

Follow the lead of other businesspeople in your field and use the same hashtags they do to connect with their customers.

For example, here at Digital Resource, our Nashville-based social media marketing team frequently uses the hashtags #clienttestimonial, #digitalmarketing, #digitalagency, #emailmarketing, and #livechat, among others.

The same holds true for your TikTok content: if you don't use trending hashtags, nobody will see it. You can still strategically create content around a trending hashtag, even if it has nothing to do with your market.

Remember that hashtags set the pace for trends on any social network. TikTok business requires a steady stream of video views, and you can get them by using trending hashtags.

Mistake #3: Including Millions of Hashtags in Your Captions

There is no guarantee that using multiple hashtags will increase engagement just because they look cool. Our Nashville-based social media team is big on minimalism, so you'll often see them posting photos and updates with just a few hashtags and a brief caption.

@digitalresource Who needs Charlie’s Angels when you’ve got our multimedia team at your service? 😇 From photography to videography — our “DR Angels” are experts at ensuring you have custom content that yields high-quality results 📸 #creativeagency #digitalmarketing #multimedia #photography #videography ♬ follow liz sanchez if you are hot - LIZ SANCHEZ 🫀

One common mistake is to use too many hashtags in a single caption or to use a string of hashtags instead of a proper caption. Using too many hashtags results in more noise, making it more difficult for your intended audience to find you.

As a general rule, it's acceptable to use between three and five popular, specific, and community-specific hashtags. Anything beyond that point becomes unreadable clutter. And before you use them on your video, check to see if they have anything to do with your content or brand.

RELATED: The Best TikTok Hashtags for Growth 2023

Mistake #4: Ignoring Geo-Specific Hashtags

Why would anyone disregard hashtags popular in your immediate community? That is incorrect. Our social media marketing experts in Nashville make an effort to include geo-specific hashtags in our videos. 

You may ask, why is that?

We want local businesses to be able to contact us and, hopefully, join our TikTok marketing community. Additionally, getting involved in the community is an excellent way to build relationships and gain exposure within the neighborhood you're attempting to reach, which is especially important if you have a physical location or need to target customers in a specific area.

RELATED: Location Targeting on TikTok

Experiment with #NashvilleCity, #IloveNashville, and other Nashville-centric hashtags. Take advantage of the event's hashtag to get your support for the event in front of other people who are there.

Mistake #5: Not Using Hashtags at All

no hashtag

Not using hashtags at all is the single biggest screwup you can make.

Don't neglect using hashtags in TikTok posts unless you have a massive brand with tons of organic engagement already. Hashtags are a quick and easy way to increase your brand's exposure on the platform.

Because hashtags can be used as a search term, using them will increase the number of people who see your profiles, posts, and content.

But there's a catch: hashtags can only be used effectively for growth if they're used strategically. So, let's look at some data:

  • TikTok users who use between one and three hashtags see a 27% increase in engagement.
  • Engagement increases by only 5% when using more than three TikTok hashtags.
  • The hashtag #foryou has received 56 billion impressions, making it the most popular.

3 TikTok Hashtag Best Practices for Growth

  1. Think about your target audience. Before you dive headfirst into the TikTok tagging frenzy, it's a good idea to do some research in your niche by reading related posts, watching relevant videos, and taking note of the hashtags used.
  1. Have a look at the hashtags being used by your competitors.
  1. With these tips in mind, you can create a unique hashtag for your content, inspire your audience to use it in their posts, and hopefully attract more viewers and fans.

TikTok Hashtags Can Help You Go Viral

Ultimately, learning how to use hashtags in your social media marketing effectively will allow you to expand your online reach and raise brand awareness by connecting with people who are interested in your content but aren't already part of your network.

If social media isn't your thing, but you recognize the value of these channels for the survival of your practice, feel free to reach out to our Nashville social media marketers.

At Digital Resource, we can help you develop and implement a strategy to reach your business objectives through social media.

Contact us today, and we'll tell you how we can assist you.

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