Looking for ways to improve hashtags and generate content ideas? Making use of Google Trends can help you find ideal hashtags, identify trending topics, and inform the content you create for your brand.
Hashtags are fairly easy to get to grips with, but actually using them in the best way possible can be tough. No one should be #hashtagging #every #word, but how do you know which words/phrases to hashtag? How can you improve hashtags? It can be a tricky business, but don’t fear! Giraffe Social are here to help, so you can use hashtags to fully optimise content!
You’re probably familiar with seeing a post on photography, for instance, followed by a swarm of hashtags in the caption along the lines of #photography #photographylovers #photographer #portraitphotography #landscapephotography. The hashtag’s purpose is essentially to make it easier for users to find content related to that subject. By using hashtags in your caption or the first comment section of your post, you make it easier for users looking for posts on that topic to find your post; Thus, you’re making it easier for people to interact with your post.
Google Trends
The challenge is, then, how do you know what people are searching for? By hashtagging the most-searched-for terms, you’re going to draw the most attention to your post. That’s where Google Trends comes in.
Google Trends is a website that analyses the popularity of search queries in Google Search and uses graphs to compare the search volume of these queries over time. Additionally, Google Trends allows users to compare the search volume for specific searches for two or more terms. To put it simply, you can find out how many people are searching for ‘Cat’ in comparison with the amount searching for ‘Dog’ and compare how much that volume has changed in the last year.
Google Trends to improve Hashtags
Let’s say you you work at a pet shop, and you find that people are searching more for cats than they are for dogs, how can use that to your advantage to improve hashtags? Well, you might use it make an informed decision about the content you post to your social media; You might choose to post about the new cat toy that’s just come back in stock, rather than the dog toy (Can you tell I’m a cat person?). Then, when posting this content, you can use the relevant hastags, i.e. #cats. You could even use Google Trends to see that the search volume for ‘Chew toy’ is significantly higher than that for ‘Dental toy’, which could certainly help when naming products for our furry friends.
You can also use it to see what trends are on the rise. If you’re thinking looking for a topic for a new blog post to drive traffic to your website, you can use the current trends to help pick a topic. For instance, if you work in designer fashion and you want to write a blog about a designer brand, you can compare Gucci with Dior, to see which topic is likely to gain more traction. Not only does this allow you to gain more of an understanding of your audience, but it also means that when you then share this blog online, you can hashtag the most trending topics in your field.
Other Benefits of Google Trends
Google Trends isn’t just great to help improve hashtags! If you’re trying to monitor your brand awareness, you can see the degree to which your brand name is trending and keep an eye on the interest over time. If you’ve got a product that you want to narrow down the targeting for, you can see the degree to which trending topics related to that product are being searched in various locations. For example, when comparing the search time ‘documentaries’ (blue) with ‘horror films’ (red), whilst writing this blog, we can see that ‘horror films’ are being searched for in Wales more than they are in Northern Ireland.
You can also use Google Trends to find websites and relevant articles for backlinking (inbound links or incoming links). For example, if you have a photography blog, you could use Google Trends to find relevant trusted sites to then try and connect with, in the hopes of getting that site to link to your website.
Additional benefits of Google Trends include:
- Increased viewership: People are more likely to discover your content.
- Build followers: If using the same hashtag repeatedly, people interested in the topic of your hashtag will start to see your posts more often, and you will start to become an authority on that subject. Be careful with this, however, as repeating hashtags (or using too many) on Instagram can lead to the algorithm flagging your content as spam.
- Branding: You can use branded hashtags to help build your brand awareness, i.e. #ShareaCoke or #OreoHorrorStories. Your followers can then follow this hashtag to stay up to date with your brand.
- Competitions: You can run competitions with specific hashtags to help you track how well your competition is doing.
- The other type of ‘competition’: You can monitor what your competitors are up to by seeing what conversions they are a part of via hashtags.
It’s that simple! Google Trends is a great way to improve hashtags, and help drive up the volume of people seeing and interacting with your social media posts. If that all feels a little daunting (as the world of Social Media often can), why not check out the range of Social Media services that we offer? Giraffe Social Media are a team of Social Media experts ready and waiting to bring your Social Media presence to life, and help you achieve your company goals. Sound good? Of course, it does! Check out our services here.
