Have you ever wondered why we started using hashtags in our social media posts? In 2007, Twitter users started using them to track topics they were interested in and other platforms gradually followed suit: now you’ll find them on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and, crucially, TikTok. They’re everywhere!
Hashtags are so ubiquitous, we hardly even see them any more – they’re part of the social media furniture, and they’re easy to overlook when you’re planning your social media content because of it. But underestimate them at your peril. On TikTok, hashtags are one of your most valuable app marketing tools we have – and a key way to get your videos in front of the users you most want to reach.
But you need a strategy to stand out among the cleantokkers, the booktokkers and the videos of cats doing weird things. After all, there are 1.5 billion people on TikTok and you don’t want to waste your time with the ones who aren’t your app’s target audience. There are also 34 million videos uploaded every day, so if you don’t tap into the communities that your content is relevant to, you risk your videos being lost in the noise.
Play your cards right and you can hashtag your way to seriously boosting the performance of your app campaigns and acquiring more users. Luckily, we’ve got all the know-how to help you master the art of the TikTok hashtags right here.
What are TikTok hashtags and why should you care?
TikTok hashtags are keywords incorporated into video captions. For a humble keyword, a hashtag can be remarkably powerful: it can be essential to helping users find your videos, used by algorithm to categorise your videos by content, build communities and increase your chance at going viral.
If you’ve got TikTok on your phone right now, open it up and have a look at a few videos – you’ll find the hashtags at the bottom of the video, in the caption (you may have to tap the caption to expand it). Sometimes hashtags will be grouped together below the caption, sometimes they’ll be #incorporated into the #caption itself – and sometimes they’ll replace the caption entirely. If you click on a hashtag, you’ll be taken to a search page full of other videos that have been tagged with the same thing.
It pays to put some time and effort into coming up with the right hashtags for your videos: but be careful! You don’t want to flood them with tens of random hashtags just to increase visibility. Think focused, considered tags that will get your app marketing videos in front of the people who will be most engaged with them. The hashtag is as important as the copy in your caption so give it the same attention.
How to use TikTok hashtags effectively
So how do you get your hashtags just right? By carefully considering what you’re using them for.
The best way to do this is to have your hashtags in mind from the very planning stages of your content. Try to come up with a small selection of hashtags for each of your videos – fewer, more focussed hashtags are far more effective than tens of random, barely relevant ones.
We recommend including:
- At least one branded hashtag to group your videos together and build your community – if your users post about the app using your branded TikTok hashtag, it increases your visibility and makes it easier to track engagement
- Two or three tags to help surface your content – think carefully about who you’re trying to reach and how that person relates to the content of your video.
- A challenge – if there’s a ‘challenge’ element to your video, choose a hashtag that has a call to action in it – remember the #IceBucketChallenge?
If you pick one or two of each of these types of hashtags for your content, then you can maximise the effectiveness of both your videos and your hashtags. Behind the scenes, each one can help brands and marketers track the effectiveness of your content in different ways.
What TikTok hashtags should you be using?
Let’s dig a bit further into the types of hashtags we’re talking about and how to decide which of them are right for your app marketing content.
Branded Hashtags
Pretty much all of your videos should have at least one branded hashtag. You’ll use these to create brand awareness and encourage user-generated content, so spend some time coming up with something that reflects the vibe of your brand but is also short and easily recognisable as yours.
If you’re running a specific TikTok campaign, you may want to think of a second branded hashtag to group the videos for that campaign together too – this will help with your tracking and analysis when it comes to judging how effective that specific campaign has been.
And you can keep it super simple! In the videos below Toca Social, a casual football minigame place, used two branded hashtags #tocasocial and #toca. Both hashtags helped them to track engagement, views, and sentiment across a series of TikTok videos.
Challenge Hashtags
Challenge hashtags can be very powerful for app marketing. They drive installs as users need to download the app to join the challenge – and the interactive element gives it a good chance at going viral.
AirBrush app is a great example of an app that used a challenge hashtag effectively. They created a piece of content that was also a challenge, essentially driven by just the hashtag itself. The #AirBrushChallenge encouraged users to download the app, take a photo of themselves and toggle all the image editing settings up to the max, which always gave funny results.
It was so easy for everyone watching to do it themselves, and each person who did posted their own video with the app’s hashtag: #AirbrushChallenge. The original video that started the trend received 595k views, driving a 29% engagement rate – but more importantly, it resulted in an additional 198 videos of user-generated content. Downloads grew, reach grew; and brand awareness grew – it was a huge success.
But most importantly, it spawned an additional 198 videos of UGC from this trend.
Discovery Hashtags
TikTok hashtags help your videos show up in search results and make it easier for people who are interested in your content and app to find you. It’s actually wise to go quite niche with your discovery hashtags – #app probably isn’t going to get you very far but #veganrecipeapp will help vegans who are interested in recipes to find you.
Don’t be afraid to have several of these hashtags on your content: some might be a little broader, some might hone in directly on a specific segment: just remember not to go crazy! Throwing every vaguely relevant hashtag at every video is not an effective strategy!
Remember, you can always mix and match when it comes to TikTok hashtags – on one video you might have two branded hashtags and three discovery hashtags, or on a challenge video you might stick to your primary brand hashtag and your challenge hashtag. Just be clear on what the purpose of every tag is.
How to come up with effective TikTok hashtags
Don’t leave your hashtag research until the last possible minute: build it into your creative app campaign from day one. Start off with some keyword research to figure out the types of hashtags it’s worth targeting and which hashtags the demographic you’re interested in are using.
Researching TikTok hashtags is a lot like coming up with your SEO and even ASO keywords. Use the TikTok search bar to look up a root keyword and note the autocomplete options. You can also use your SEO keyword research tool of choice to come up with effective hashtag options: there will be crossover between what people are searching for on Google and on TikTok. It’s also worth keeping an eye on TikTok’s trending topics for anything relevant to your content and popular hashtags on TikTok Creative Centre page.
When you’ve narrowed down your possible hashtags, be sure to search for each of them on TikTok: you want to make sure there’s no inappropriate content on the hashtag already, or that it isn’t being used to mean something you haven’t considered.
It’s also worth getting everyone on the team to check them over: slang trends moveschange so fast, you might have inadvertently missed something. Never forget when Susan Boyle’s new album was launched with the hashtag #susanalbumparty – it got a lot of attention, but not exactly because of Susan’s album..!
You can incorporate your TikTok hashtags into your video captions if that feels natural, but often it feels more human and relatable to include them after the caption.
TikTok hashtags no-nos
Here are some common mistakes to avoid when using TikTok hashtags.
- Steer clear from overly popular hashtags – There’s no need to tag your videos with #fyp or #foryoupage – it’s an urban legend that this pushes your content to users’ For You pages (and even if it did work, millions of videos a day come with those hashtags so it would be almost pointless anyway!). Similarly, tagging #viral won’t help you go viral, so don’t bother.
- Avoid overloading your posts with too many hashtags – Keep your hashtags economical and focussed: aim for three-to-five hashtags per video. Using too many irrelevant hashtags can be counterproductive and cause your content to get lost – and flooding your caption with hashtags looks spammy.
- Keep an eye on your hashtag’s performance: Always monitor your hashtags and keep rethinking any that aren’t performing for you: but give your brand some time to build by keeping your branded hashtags consistent.
Your TikTok hashtag strategy for success
TikTok hashtags can be really valuable to app marketers – as long as they’re done right. They can not only help you track and analyse your campaigns but build community among your users and reach people you might not have reached before. And who knows, the humble hashtag could be responsible for your app going viral for all the right reasons!
Hashtags are small but essential addition to your TikTok app campaigns – guiding your content to the right audience.
