Branding Matters

How to Grow Your Business Using the Right Hashtags with Matthew Pierce

April 08, 2022 Branding Badass Episode 61
Branding Matters
How to Grow Your Business Using the Right Hashtags with Matthew Pierce
Show Notes Transcript

My guest today is Mathew Pierce; the Co-Founder of the #Hashtagslayer app - a startup Instagram marketing tool that’s helping small business owners reach their ideal clients on Instagram.

Not only does #Hashtagslayer optimize hashtags that are specifically tailored to your specific needs, it provides inside information that allows you to avoid banned hashtags, which can only cause problems and possibly get you banned from Instagram altogether.

I invited Mathew to be a guest on my show to discuss the “dos and don’ts” of hashtags. I wanted to know why they are such valuable branding tools when creating brand awareness on social media. And I was curious to learn what the optimum amount of hashtags is when creating a post.

💥IF YOU WANT HELP GETTING YOUR CLIENTS TO FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR BRAND,  REACH OUT TO ME ON SOCIAL AT BRANDING_BADASS OR EMAIL ME AT JGOODSON@GENUMARK.COM

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Hey there, I'm Joelly - the Branding Badass. My badass superpower is helping you build a brand that matters. From branded merch to brand consulting, when you work with me, you get results!

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Joelly Goodson :

Hi I'm Joelly, your Branding Badass, and welcome to season two of Branding Matters. My guest today is Matthew Pearce. You may not recognize the name right now, but I guarantee you, you will soon enough. Matthew is the Co-founder of the #Hashtagslayer app, a startup Instagram marketing tool that he created with his wife, Danica, and together, they are helping small business owners reach their ideal clients on Instagram. Not only does #Hashtagslayer optimize hashtags that are specifically tailored to your needs, but it provides insight information that allows you to avoid banned hashtags, which can only cause problems and possibly even get you banned from Instagram altogether. This is an amazing tool that I discoveredand I'm so excited to share it with you here today. So I invited Matthew to be guest on my show to discuss the do's and don'ts of hashtags. I wanted to know why they are such a valuable branding tool when creating brand awareness on social media. And I was really curious to learn what the optimal amount of hashtags really is, when you create a post, Matthew, welcome to Branding Matters.

Mathew Pierce:

Hey, Joelly, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Joelly Goodson :

I'm actually really excited to have you here. Because you know, you hear about hashtags all the time, everybody, here's what they are. And I think there's a lot of people out there, I hope I'm not the only one that really doesn't understand what they really are, and more importantly, how to use them correctly. So right away, I thought if I can learn from you, then I have no doubt my audience is gonna learn from you, too. So thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. Before we get into it, though, can you give us a little bit of your origin story? Where are you from? What's your background?

Mathew Pierce:

Okay, let's see. My name is Matthew. I'm from British Columbia. And I've been interested in design and marketing and computer programming since I was a child. So I've been making websites and programs since I was a kid. I went to design school. And that's where I met my wife de Nika, who is my co founder for hashtag Slayer. And, yeah, I've just always been interested in in this space. Before I kind of got into doing hashtags there, I was doing agency work, working at marketing agencies, designing brands, making websites and during development. And I also had a project on the side where this is kind of my first like digital product that I that I worked on was a social network that I built. And it's a it's a platform where the internet makes comics together. So someone draws one panel and someone else the next, and so on. So it gets kind of crazy. But that's just to say, you know, social media has been a space I'm super interested in for a long time. So I'm just kind of like to keep building on those skills.

Joelly Goodson :

Oh, that's so cool. I love that. What did you study in school?

Mathew Pierce:

I studied communication design.

Joelly Goodson :

Okay, so can you explain what is a hashtag? And how did it evolve? And what is it used for? Let's go back to the basics.

Mathew Pierce:

Okay, yeah. Hashtags, one to one. So Ashton is, you know, it's a piece of text that you add to whatever you're posting on social media. And it has a pound symbol in front of it. So what this does is it categorizes your content, it links it with other content that's been categorized the same way. And it can be used to increase your reach on social media, and to help like minded people to find you. But it wasn't always like that. It was inspired by Internet Relay Chat clients, which was a often IRC that's been going around since like the late 80s, and 90s. And it's essentially, you know, chat rooms that you'd have. And it worked kind of like Slack. So this was used mostly by programmers and big tech geeks. But how it worked is you would enter your text into a different channel, like you have on slack of the chatroom, by putting a pound symbol in front, and then the name of the channel you're trying to access. So that's kind of what inspired it. And then in 2007, Chris Messina, who is a technologist and in the States, and he was a taking part in a convention, and basically was like, Hey, guys, wouldn't it be great if we could group all our tweets about this topic, and start just encouraging people to do that and to you know, put the pound symbol in front and then whatever they're talking about, of course, Twitter didn't pick up on this right away. So it was actually two years of people just doing this without there being any real system for it. Until 2009 when Twitter officially started to support hashtags.

Joelly Goodson :

How did it go from that to an actual tool that people use especially on you know, I would say Instagram and I want to I want to get to platforms, but we're How did it be? COMM a tool to help you grow your business? Well,

Mathew Pierce:

I mean, once you once you have content categorized, you have such a great way of getting in front of customers, right? It's kind of like SEO with Google or some other search platforms, it's, you know, there's an intent shown when someone is searching a hashtag. And so if you know, they're looking for this kind of content, you could start to use it on yours. And, you know, actually, I was very cynical. Back in the day, when I started to see this, you'd see like, ads on bus stops and everything. And they'd always they were really trying to push hashtags, trying to encourage people to use them. So a lot of the time, this would be used to, you know, buy big corporate brands to convince people to enter contests or generate UGC, user generated content. That's kind of where it really started was first just community, then people just doing it, and then Corporation started to pick up on it, and it's gone from there. And now I see it as a really big opportunity for small businesses even more so than those those big brands that jumped on it at first.

Joelly Goodson :

Right? And why do you think that is? I think it's because you can just so finely tune your search for the hashtag, like it's a lot more niched, down and niche specific than kind of a general keyword search. So you know, people create communities around different hashtags. And you don't get that just with a search term. So there's just an opportunity. If you are a small business, who has a very specific set of customers, you can really find out what they're talking about maybe different kinds of content, they're creating around specific hashtags, and take advantage of that. Okay, so we talked about Twitter, we talk about Instagram, I mean, are there certain social media platforms where hashtags are definitely beneficial? And are there other platforms where you don't really need hashtags? Or what would you say about that?

Mathew Pierce:

Obviously, Twitter, Instagram, very important in both of those Tik Tok as well, hashtags are used a ton. The one where I'd say it isn't really that relevant is maybe Facebook, there are hashtags on Facebook, but I've never looked one up on Facebook. I've I've been asking people for years, if they've ever used hashtags on Facebook, I've, I've yet to find someone who says they do. So when you add hashtags there, it just seems kind of out of place.

Joelly Goodson :

And what about LinkedIn? LinkedIn is one of the fastest growing platforms, especially for business. I don't know if you're on LinkedIn, but so many, so many businesses and entrepreneurs are on LinkedIn. Right now. It's grown exponentially, especially during COVID. So and then I see the odd hashtag on there. So what would you say about LinkedIn?

Mathew Pierce:

I definitely see hashtags used more there. And it seems as though they're relevant to us. But I don't personally use a use LinkedIn very much. So yeah, I'm, I'm kind of a Luddite when it comes to LinkedIn, to be honest, like, I agree, I have my account up there. But I just, I'm not exactly in the b2b space. So it's just not something where I've, I've invested a lot of

Joelly Goodson :

time, okay, well, you might be now with hashtags later. So we might have maybe I can help you out with LinkedIn, I have a lot of experience on LinkedIn. It's a great, it's a great tool. It's a great platform for growing your business, FYI. And it's grown, like I said, especially during COVID. So many businesses, entrepreneurs are on there. So it might be a missed opportunity for you. But we can we can talk about that later. So how do you know if you're a business owner? How do you know which hashtags to use? I mean, you see it all the time, I see it on posts, where people are just posting all types of hashtags. So how does someone who has a business and they're trying to create brand awareness or they're trying to grow their clientele? How do they even know which hashtags they should be using?

Unknown:

Oh, that is a huge question.

Joelly Goodson :

I know, let's see if we can break it down per post. Why don't we do that? When you do pose? How do you know which hashtags to use? One thing I would say is, it's got to be very relevant to your post, as well as your business and the audience that you're trying to reach. So I see these as kind of the three essential building blocks for a hashtag strategy is, you don't want to only describe what you've posted. If say, this is Instagram, and you're describing an image or something, you don't want to just describe what's in the image. You would also want to describe if this is a business, what kind of industry you're in, what services you're providing, what are you talking about that's related to your business? And then also, you need to be talking about your your audience, but who are you trying to reach? What hashtags describe them? And what hashtags are they using themselves? This is kind of a the trifecta where by doing this, you can reach people who are looking specifically for, you know, maybe the image you're posting or images of that, as well as people who are looking for your service or industry, or, you know, people who are just looking up other stuff related to them. People are selfish, they, you know, they always care about themselves. And that's something we have to keep in mind whenever we're doing marketing. Let me take a step back there for a sec. I think a lot of the time when people are posting hashtags on their posts, they really forget about the audience. People know, you know, okay, if I'm going to use hashtags, I'll just describe what I've posted. Cool. And they might even say, Yeah, well, I've got this business, I'm going to put a bunch of hashtags related to my business, I want people to find it, this is what it is. Okay, great. If you're using a bunch of hashtags that describe podcasting, or podcasters, or what have you, and your audience is not podcasters, you're going to get in trouble, because your content is only going to be seen by your competitors, or your industry peers. So for example, you might have an audience who includes entrepreneurs, small business owners, maybe other marketers wanting to learn more about marketing. These are the hashtags you need to be using as well, that describe the audience you're trying to reach. Because so often people forget this, and just only get in front of their industry peers. So you need to be describing your audience. And, even better yet, if your post can speak directly to that audience, we're going to make, again, the content of your posts more relevant to the hashtags you're using. So more specific, the better.

Mathew Pierce:

Absolutely. Especially when we're talking about small businesses or growing accounts on these platforms. If you have a massive account, you can get away with more general hashtags. But these more specific hashtags are going to be less competitive, giving you a better chance of getting seen.

Joelly Goodson :

And what about creating your own hashtag? Is that a good thing or not a good thing? I think a lot of people do this, just because they feel like they have to Yeah, they hear oh, you should have a branded hashtag. And so they go ahead and do it. But a mistake I often see here is that their branded hashtag is simply their brand name. And they're not using it in any strategic way. Meaning that they just put it on every post. And so this branded hashtag essentially works as a page, if you were to look at that hashtag, where you can see every post by this one business. Okay, cool. But your profile page already does this. So there isn't much need for the hashtag. Now, that's not to say don't use branded hashtags. It's just you shouldn't be strategic when you do so. And that means typically, you either want to use it to encourage people to provide you with user generated content, or to take part in a contest. Or you try and create a community around this hashtag. So this should be a tagline from your business, or a phrase that people can get behind and believe in. And ideally, this should be a phrase that people could understand or get behind. Even if they've never heard of your company, for example, which hashtag are people more likely to use hashtag Nike or hashtag, just do it, they might even use hashtag just do it when they're not talking about Nike. And that's actually what you want, it seems counterintuitive. But you want to use a hashtag that people can get behind. Because first, you'll be the only one using it. And then maybe some of your audience will start to use it. And then it spreads from there, because other people see, oh, that's a cool hashtag, I'm going to add it. Now when they do. This introduces new people to your content, you're the one who created this hashtag, you're going to be dominating the content already. So when people view it over time, they're going to be led back to your business. Okay, so it's okay to create one. And ideally, you want to have other people to use your hashtag. Is that what you're saying?

Mathew Pierce:

Absolutely. You need to, you need to create one and encourage as many other people to use it as you can. Don't be don't be stingy or greedy with your hashtag.

Joelly Goodson :

Okay. Oh, I love that. That's great. As far as how many hashtags you use, you hear so many different I've heard so many different things out there, what is the right amount of hashtags to use on a post?

Mathew Pierce:

So it's gonna be different between the the platforms? I specialize in Instagram hashtags, so I can't say necessarily what the limit is on every other platform.

Joelly Goodson :

Okay. Well, we'll talk about specifically Instagram. Sure. So Instagrams hashtags, they give you up to 30 hashtags that you can use. And last summer, the Instagram at creators account, which is an official account from theirs that targets influencers and gives them advice said, you should only use three to five hashtags. So that's weird, especially when they the platform itself doesn't doesn't limit you to three to five hashtags. They let you use up to 30. So a lot of people started trying to use three to five, and they got worse results. Some people started using three to five, and they got better results. What's happening here is that those people who started using three to five and saw better results typically didn't have a hashtag strategy in the first place. So when they when they posted, they would say, Oh, what am I posting about? And they would just try and come up with as many hashtags off the top of their head. And Most people do, to be honest with you. I mean, I see it I see all the time, some hashtags out there, and I and that's why I wanted to bring you on to because I think a lot of people just kind of go out there and do stuff that is they think is relevant, and it's gonna get them notice. Absolutely, yeah. But the thing is, is the algorithm is looking at how relevant are these hashtags to your post? The more relevant they are, the better your post will perform with your hashtags. But if If you're just throwing a bunch of hashtags at it off the top of your head, the more hashtags you add, the higher the chances are, those hashtags aren't relevant. So that is why you hear all these different numbers saying, Oh, you only should use five or only use 10, or anything else. It's really to give you a foolproof way to avoid using irrelevant hashtags. But no one really says that. So the number is as many relevant hashtags as you can. And so why is 30 the maximum that with Instagram?

Mathew Pierce:

That's just the number they chose? They've never, never given an explanation that I've seen.

Joelly Goodson :

Okay. And so are you saying basically them that it's quality over quantity? Like make sure that each one you use is relevant, and it's going to help you in some way?

Mathew Pierce:

Not exactly. I mean, yes. That's why every hashtag, is an avenue that leads back to your business. Right? So as many relevant hashtags as you can find, you're going to do well, but say, there's one of us who uses five hashtags that are relevant, and another one of us uses 30 hashtags that are relevant, that person with 30 is going to do better. So it's, it's about quality first, but then if you can keep up the quality over quantity, because you have a broader reach with more hashtags, exactly. You're going to reach more people, you're going to get in front of more audiences. So it just gives you a better shot.

Joelly Goodson :

Okay, well, that's interesting. Have you seen a lot of I mean, I just talked about stuff that I see, have you seen a lot of mistakes on Instagram? I mean, obviously, there's a reason why you started your business. And I want to get to that. But what are some common mistakes that you see people doing over and over again, One, I would say, is copying and pasting the same set of hashtags for every post. This is something a lot of people do, once they hear they're supposed to use 30. And it can lead to some problems. Essentially, I've tested this on multiple accounts, and I've seen, it works for a while. But eventually your reach starts to decrease with your hashtags. We're not we can't say exactly why this happens. But it seems as though either the Instagram algorithm sees this as potentially automated behavior kind of bought like spammy kind of behavior. So they they limit your accounts reach, that's one potential option. The other is that, when you are just pasting the same hashtags every time, you're no longer ensuring that those hashtags are relevant. And if someone's viewing a hashtag on Instagram, they can go through the posts, and each post has three little dots in the top right. If you click on these dots, there is a option to don't show this post for this hashtag. And if enough people click on this, your posts can actually start to get hidden from those hashtags. So Oh, okay. I didn't know that. Yeah, you're using these hashtags, trying to reach your audience. But if they're not, if you're not providing relevant content, you're actually just taking off the audience that you're trying to reach. And you can basically get muted from reaching those people. Interesting. Okay. Wow. Alright. Wow, is there ever a time when you do a post that you shouldn't use a hashtag,

Mathew Pierce:

I mean, maybe if you don't want people to be seeing your posts, if you if you only want it being seen by your existing followers,

Joelly Goodson :

You know, I was gonna ask you like, cuz I do mixture of business and personal, and I'll sometimes I'll do a post, and I won't put any hashtags, and I get tons of engagement, right. And so I always wonder about that. I'm like, okay, so I didn't do any hashtags on this post, and look at all the engagement I got, and then otherwise, I do. So just curious about that. What kind of post was it, you know, I usually do family pictures. So my son or my boyfriend or my mother or whatever, someone in my family or something that I'm doing, and I don't, you know, I wouldn't do a hashtag. Because I guess when I do those posts, they're just a personal post, I'm just sharing a little bit, you know, behind the scenes, I guess of my life without necessarily thinking strategically about growing my business and growing my account. And then ironically, those get lots of engagement. Oh, that doesn't surprise me at all. But most of that engagement is probably from people who already follow you. And that's the thing is like these personal posts, they're way easier to connect with. And if you're sharing some kind of milestone or something, something that can be encouraged or congratulated, you don't even have to think about how to engage with that, right? You see someone doing something great. You say congratulations, you move on, it makes it very easy for people to like and comment and take part in it. That is some of the most highly engaged content. It's just you can't post that every day. So yeah. So really, hashtags are a way to grow your business. And you know, I go back to branding, in a sense, because it's about creating brand awareness. So for having you're already followers, that's great. But your goal is to if you want to grow your business and grow your brand awareness, these hashtags are the tools to help you do that. Absolutely. Yeah, you need to have good content that speaks to the audience you're trying to serve. But if you have that, then why would you not want to do something to increase your reach that can be very easy and automated. I've seen people increase their reach by 10%. I've also seen that increase it by 200%. So it's gonna depend on where you're starting from and while you're your niches and everything else, but because the hashtags Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. Even if it's only a 10% increase, like, why would you skip out on that? It's stll an increase

Mathew Pierce:

Absolutely. Hashtags are so interesting, because that's exactly what they're doing is they're helping you grow your business, find your find the consumer, bringing them to you, and then helping you ultimately with your business. Right?

Unknown:

Absolutely. And the other thing is, I think a lot of people, especially if they maybe have like a local business, or something brick and mortar, that might skip out on a lot of this, maybe they do some social media, maybe they do, maybe they don't. But say you do run a social media page for your your brick and mortar, hashtags can still help they can get you in front of local customers if you're using location focused hashtags. But even if you get people following you who aren't in your vicinity aren't anywhere near you, the more people who are engaging with your content and interacting is going to have a huge effect on your brand. It's going to increase your brand authority in the eyes of your local customers. So even if you're not necessarily getting direct customers from them, it's not something to skip out on.

Joelly Goodson :

Mmhmm. Oh, I agree. You know, you hear people all time that say they're not on social media, and you kind of go away, it's free and be you're missing out on like this huge opportunity. Okay, so let's talk about hashtag Slayer app, because very impressive. It's a startup. So is it an actual app?

Mathew Pierce:

So on Instagram, at Hashtag Slayer was taken by some dead account, and they don't let me put com in the in the username. So it's a it's a web app. So it's, it's all on the web, a lot of people add it to their home screen on their smartphones. So it's saved right to their their screen. And they're able to open it and use it just like an app. But you're not going to find it in the in the app store on your Android or

Joelly Goodson :

What's the difference between a browser app your iPhone. and an app you can get on iTunes or on the App Store?

Mathew Pierce:

The only difference really is that you have to go to your browser, you know, it functions like an app, and that, you know, you can save things and do whatever else you want. Like I think a good example is okay, the difference between a web app and a website that people can understand quickly, if you're going to the website for your local pizzeria, where they've got, you know, their telephone number and a PDF. And that's about it. That's a website for sure. But Facebook, that's more of a web app. Yeah, they have an app that you can get on down on the app store and download it. But you could also just go to facebook.com and use it that way.

Joelly Goodson :

Okay, okay. Yeah, it's great. Well, I tried it out. And I think it's great. But I guess I gotta be devil's advocate, and say, there's a lot of hashtag tools out there I've seen, so what makes your app different than all the other hashtag apps that are out there? Put me on the spot. Okay. So I like that one. Essentially, there's a couple things and one is that we we try to do everything above the board, only using official data that's provided to us by Facebook and Instagram. Meaning that you have to log in with Facebook and connect your Instagram account to us. And we do this to kind of follow all their their security practices and, and what have you to ensure the safety of your account. And in doing this, we're then able to access information on your your Instagram account, meaning we can look up your recent posts and see what kind of engagement you're getting, how many followers do you have, you know, has that number gone up or down from that we're able to suggest hashtags for you. And we're able to do this intelligently saying, Okay, we're looking for hashtags that maybe are, you know, a little bit less competitive for this smaller account, or a little, a little more competitive with a better reach for this larger account. So that's one thing is that we connect directly to your Instagram to get this information and make good suggestions. The other thing, because we only use official Instagram data, there is actually some limits into the information that we receive. And one of those is the number of posts that a hashtag has. So if I'm on Instagram, and I look up a hashtag, the first thing it tells me is, this hashtag has a million posts, or this hashtag has 10,000 posts. And so the major strategy that everyone tells people to pick their hashtags is something like Oh, choose 10 that have less than 50,000 posts and choose another 10 hashtags that have somewhere between that and 100,000, you know, 10 that are less than a million or something like that. Now, when it came time to build hashtags there, and to build it, only using this official Instagram data, frankly, I had a panic attack. Because I was building this whole tool out. That's the strategy everyone talked about in terms of how to pick your hashtags. And then as I dove into the documentation, and started to see what data I could actually get from Instagram, I realized they don't tell us this number. They do not give you the number of posts for a hashtag through their official data sources. So there's other hashtag apps out there and most of them they basically scrape the information from Instagrams website Using like bots and web crawlers to essentially steal the number, and that's how they rank their hashtags. But I was trying to play within the box of the official Instagram rules. You know, I didn't want to infringe upon anything in terms of the terms of service, because if people are connecting their accounts to us, I just want to be aboveboard. So I spent a couple of nights freaking out doing a bunch of math, looking at countless hashtags, and counting all their posts up and looking for patterns. And I basically locked myself in my office for like five hours a night just with like a notepad doing all this math, and my wife thought I was going crazy. Because I needed to find a way to rank hashtags without using the number of posts. And this is what really sets us apart. Actually, it was a it was a great lightbulb moment, because I discovered that choosing hashtags based on the number of posts is actually a really bad and inaccurate way of doing it. Hmm. That's really, that's really enlightening, because I've heard that somebody will say that you know, that you don't want to be too too high, and you don't want to be too low, you want to be somewhere in the middle. So I'd like to hear you elaborate on that. Totally. As we were saying before, hashtags have a long history, Instagram has been around since like 2010, hashtags have been on Instagram for more than a decade, meaning that number of posts under a hashtag, it doesn't tell you how popular or competitive A hashtag is. That's what people are trying to measure. Instead, it tells you this is how popular it's been. Historically, we don't know if that hashtag is still popular. Or if it was once popular. An analogy I like to use is thinking of all of Instagram as a parade, okay? If you're a local business, you you might take part in the parade, you got to float, the float is your your post or your content. And that float, it's got your logo on the side leads people back to your business. Now, if this was a local parade, my business was taking part in, I wouldn't ask how many floats have gone down this parade in the last 10 years? You know, it's it's not going to help you understand how competitive this parade it's going to be instead. Okay, so again, earlier, I said, every hashtag is an avenue that leads back to your business. So if there were perhaps multiple avenues or streets, you could choose in this parade, maybe it goes down different streets that all lead back, you'd say, hey, is this avenue going quickly or slowly, if it's at a complete standstill? Well, no one's watching that parade, it's not very interesting to take part in. But if it's moving too quickly, people might not have a chance to actually see the logo on the side of your float. So this is one aspect we look at. And that is how quickly our posts being added to the hashtag. To understand this, we look at the recent posts section of a hashtag. And we average it out we say is a new post being added every 10 seconds, every minute or every hour somewhere in between, this kind of gives us a feel for the flow of the hashtag, the slower it is, the less competitive and easier to rank on. The faster it is, the more competitive the greater reach, but also harder to rank on. That's part one of the of the formula. And there's just one other part I'll dive into here. And that is looking at the top posts of a hashtag. So the top posts used to be top nine now you can go through it for longer. Essentially, these are hashtags that have broken through to be shown as the you know, the shining stars of the hashtag for whatever time period. And this is something we want to look at. How much engagement are these top posts getting? How flashy? Are these these floats? And you find Oh, sorry, I'm just going to interrupt you because and you find those in the search section, right? When you're on Instagram.

Mathew Pierce:

Yeah, if you're searching a hashtag, if you go to a hashtag, there's three tabs, really, there's recent posts, and there's top posts. Okay. And so you'll see these top posts, and you know, how many likes and comments do they have? Okay, the more likes and comments they have, the more difficult it is going to be for you to displace them. It's essentially a threshold that you need to reach in order to hit your the top. What kind of a budget do you do the other floats in this parade hat? You know? Like, is my parade going to be this little dinky trailer that no one looks at? Or am I going to get some attention? So I hope that makes sense. But that's kind of that's the key is we rank our hashtags this way. And look at these different metrics. And we forget all about the number of posts.

Joelly Goodson :

Well, you know what, it totally makes sense. And I think for someone like myself, and so my listener base is mostly entrepreneurs and small business owners and marketers, and we're all busy trying to work our business, right. And so you come in, and that's why hashtag Slayer is I think, such a valuable tool. And that's why I brought you on because I think there's a lot of people listening, they're like, Okay, well, I heard everything you said, but I don't have time to do anything. You know, I'm focusing on my business and I just want to and that's why you see people copying and pasting and I've been guilty of it, I admit, you know, because I'm super busy and I know I want to grow my business and you know, with my podcast and with my main business or so Tell me about#Hashtagslayer and why everybody who's listening needs to get it.

Mathew Pierce:

Okay, so I know I made all that sound complicated a moment ago. But that's only in the backend, we're doing all that math and tracking everything so that you don't have to do at all. When you look up hashtags with hashtag Slayer, we simply tell you, how competitive is it? Is it highly competitive? Or is it a low competition, something in between. So we save you a ton of time, I don't want people to be looking at tables and tables of data to try and understand which hashtags are right for them, I essentially use all of my tech geekiness in the background to do set up all this math and write these algorithms so that you don't have to think about it. And one way we've been doing that is really building out our suggested hashtag tool. And that means earlier, I said, you should have hashtags in these different kinds of buckets, audience focused hashtags, business focused ones and content focused ones topics you're talking about. Cool. So you might make different collections of hashtags about this. Let's go back to the podcasting example. You'll make a hashtag around or a hashtag collection, maybe around branding podcast, okay. As soon as you make that collection, you just name it branding podcast, and you say, give me a new hashtag collection, hashtags there it looks that looks at your account, and will suggest up to 100 hashtags for you ready for you to kind of just use right away. So amazing. Yeah, it's all about saving you that time and headache. So again, leave that leave the math and all the data stuff to us.

Joelly Goodson :

Well, that's what I was gonna say. So everything that you talked about, and all the things that businesses should be doing, and a lot of people that are on social media are not doing, you're basically saying this is what if you want to grow your business, so what you need to do, but we can do it for you. So all you have to do is use this app, and I tried it and it works. And it's great. I'm still learning a lot. But I love I love that you have these amazing instructional videos for you know, you talk about LED lights right here. So you really go through step by step, and you're really helping people understand it. This podcast is called branding matters. And I really tackle all things branding to help small business owners and entrepreneurs with their business. And I think hashtags are so so important. And a lot of people don't know about them. So I'm really impressed with what you're doing to help people. So before we go, if you had, let's say, one or two tips that you would offer somebody who is looking to, I guess grow their business on social media, with hashtags, what would be I know, we talked about a lot of tips, but with the hashtag Slayer, how could they use that to help them grow brand awareness.

Unknown:

One thing I would do quickly to jumpstart your hashtag research and jumpstart your your strategy, look at what your competitors are doing. So we have a competitor search tool where you can look up any business account on Instagram, and we will automatically tell you what their top hashtags are. So I would do that. And I jump in. And I'd say, okay, I'd go in with an idea, what are the topics that I'm trying to collect hashtags for? Who are 510 competitors of mine, or industry peers I could look at, and then start ripping hashtags from theirs and categorizing them into your different topics. So I would start there. And I would also simply spend a lot of time researching my audience. What hashtags are they using? What hashtags are they're following? And just what are they talking about what I mean, I'm sure you've heard so many people on this podcast, say things like talk about their pain points and understand really what the thereafter but it's true, because you could have the best hashtag strategy. And at the end of the day, if you don't have good content that really speaks to and brings value to your audience, doesn't matter. So you need to have good content that is empathetic and understand your customers. And then you use hashtags to just put a little fuel on the fire.

Joelly Goodson :

I love it. Those are really two. Great, that's great advice, you know that they say great advertising is could be the fastest way for a product to fail if the product isn't going to stand up or the service or the brand isn't going to stand up to what your promises right. So I love that you said that. That's amazing. Well, Matthew, it's been such a pleasure talking to you. And I've learned a lot here and I hope my listeners have as well. If people want to learn more about hashtag Slayer and about you, what is the best way for them to find you and to find the app,

Unknown:

#hashtagslayer.com is where you'll find the tool and you can try it out. And if you want to learn more, follow my wife and I at #hashtagslayer on Instagram.

Joelly Goodson :

Well, thank you again. Do you have any closing words before we sign off?

Mathew Pierce:

You know what, just just remember that hashtags are the cherry on top. Get to know your audience, and then everything else will follow through.

Joelly Goodson :

That's awesome. Well, thanks again. I really appreciate it. And I hope we're gonna stay in touch because I'm excited to follow you and what's gonna happen with your business. I think it's gonna be great and you're helping a lot of people. So that's what it's all about.

Mathew Pierce:

Likewise, I really appreciate you having me on looking forward to the next one.

Joelly Goodson :

Thanks. All right. Talk to you soon. Bye. And there you have it. I hope you enjoyed the conversation and maybe learned a few things to help you with your branding. But most of all, I hope you had some fun. This show is a work in progress. So please remember to rate and review on whatever platform you listen to podcasts. And if you want to learn more about me and what I do to help my clients with their branding, feel free to reach out to me on any of the social channels under you guessed it, Branding Badass. Branding Matters was produced, edited and hosted by Joelly Goodson awesome. So thanks again and until next time, here's to all you badass is out there.