MARKETING
Understanding Hashtags on TikTok – DigitalMarketer
TikTok hashtags work differently when compared to Instagram and Facebook. On TikTok, hashtags help get you discovered by your ideal audience, help you find your community and can increase your reach.
Since the workings of hashtags on TikTok are unique, you need to understand how the algorithm deals with hashtags and how you can use them to build a business on TikTok.
Let’s explore TikTok hashtags, why they matter and how you can use them for the best results.
Why do hashtags matter on TikTok?
Like Twitter, Instagram, and other social media, hashtags help brands and individuals gain more visibility. With hashtags on your post, they automatically show up on feeds where those hashtags are searched for or where they are trending.
When used right, hashtags can increase your following in no time and help you discover more leads for your business. Indeed, hashtags helped my brand pop up on the fyp on TikTok more often, and with these discoveries, I have more profile visitors who became followers because I met their needs. So, just like Twitter, Instagram, and other social media, hashtags increase visibility.
However, there are more perks to these features and a good understanding of how Tiktok hashtags work will be beneficial.
Benefits of hashtags you should know
- They help you find your audience.
When you use a particular hashtag, TikTok automatically shows your video to people who have used that hashtag in the past or interacted with posts with the hashtag. Also, using a particular hashtag draws in the associated traffic on that hashtag to your page. For example, if you use the #naturalhair on any of your posts, TikTok shows this post to people who are searching for this hashtag or posting with it. This way, it sort of builds a community around the hashtag and sends your desired audience your way. This is why you must choose your hashtags carefully as you don’t want the algorithm driving the wrong audience your way. Apart from helping your brand pop up in search results, as I mentioned earlier, these niche hashtags are a great aid in boosting your profile and content.
- Helps you study your competition.
I always recommend studying your competitors because they remain a source of business inspiration. When you use a brand-oriented hashtag, you will see related products show up in feeds and you can use this information to find your competition. With this discovery, you can visit their profile and see what strategies you can tweak for your audience.
- Helps you find your community.
Apart from getting you discovered, Tiktok hashtags helped me find a community for my business. From the followers sharing your content, you will be found by a pool of influencers, users, and people interested in your brand or idea.
- You will discover content ideas.
Whenever you search for related hashtags, you will find high-performing hashtags. This will give you an idea of the content that resonates with your audience, so it is a win-win game.
How to use hashtags on Tiktok
- Research for relevant and high-performing hashtags: Be alert when checking out content from your competitors and other creators/coaches. Identify the most trending hashtags with the highest volume in usage and use them. Here is an excellent tool to search for the right hashtag on TikTok.
- Combine popular hashtags with less popular ones: The high-trending hashtags are very competitive, which might lower your chances of showing up on the fyp. You will likely be found faster when you add a less competitive hashtag. Go for the hashtags with 2 million views or less as it is easier to get discovered this way.
- Pay attention to the number of hashtags you use: I recommend using four seemingly related hashtags, so you don’t confuse the algorithm.
- Keep up with trends and use the latest hashtags: Use current hashtags because no one will be searching for past and forgotten hashtags.
- Create your hashtags and challenges: Don’t be afraid to create a hashtag related to your brand and even start a challenge with it. This may erupt into another big challenge on the fun app.
Are there hashtag mistakes to avoid?
Certain hashtag mistakes could be hurting your TikTok growth, so it’s important you take note of them.
- Never use irrelevant or unrelated hashtags because they will not appear for your target audience.
- Do not use only popular hashtags, as I mentioned earlier; you may not rank or show up because of the hashtag’s competition or overuse.
- Avoiding trends is never in your brand’s best interest. Sleep with trends and wake with them; you will be found.
- Never underestimate the power of local hashtags; else, your immediate community will not even know your brand exists.
To wrap up, understanding how hashtags work and how to use them on TikTok is one way to increase your business growth on the platform. With this knowledge, it’s just a matter of consistency and time before you reach your marketing goals on TikTok. Once you understand the right way to use hashtags on TikTok, you will be able to create content that actually performs, and in no time, you will see good business growth on TikTok.
MARKETING
YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]
Introduction
With billions of users each month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and top website for video content. This makes it a great place for advertising. To succeed, advertisers need to follow the correct YouTube ad specifications. These rules help your ad reach more viewers, increasing the chance of gaining new customers and boosting brand awareness.
Types of YouTube Ads
Video Ads
- Description: These play before, during, or after a YouTube video on computers or mobile devices.
- Types:
- In-stream ads: Can be skippable or non-skippable.
- Bumper ads: Non-skippable, short ads that play before, during, or after a video.
Display Ads
- Description: These appear in different spots on YouTube and usually use text or static images.
- Note: YouTube does not support display image ads directly on its app, but these can be targeted to YouTube.com through Google Display Network (GDN).
Companion Banners
- Description: Appears to the right of the YouTube player on desktop.
- Requirement: Must be purchased alongside In-stream ads, Bumper ads, or In-feed ads.
In-feed Ads
- Description: Resemble videos with images, headlines, and text. They link to a public or unlisted YouTube video.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that play outside of YouTube, on websites and apps within the Google video partner network.
Masthead Ads
- Description: Premium, high-visibility banner ads displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for both desktop and mobile users.
YouTube Ad Specs by Type
Skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Placement: Before, during, or after a YouTube video.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Action: 15-20 seconds
Non-skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Description: Must be watched completely before the main video.
- Length: 15 seconds (or 20 seconds in certain markets).
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
Bumper Ads
- Length: Maximum 6 seconds.
- File Format: MP4, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, Windows Media, or MPEG.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 640 x 360px
- Vertical: 480 x 360px
In-feed Ads
- Description: Show alongside YouTube content, like search results or the Home feed.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Headline/Description:
- Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line
- Description: Up to 2 lines, 35 characters per line
Display Ads
- Description: Static images or animated media that appear on YouTube next to video suggestions, in search results, or on the homepage.
- Image Size: 300×60 pixels.
- File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG.
- File Size: Max 150KB.
- Max Animation Length: 30 seconds.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that appear on websites and apps within the Google video partner network, not on YouTube itself.
- Logo Specs:
- Square: 1:1 (200 x 200px).
- File Type: JPG, GIF, PNG.
- Max Size: 200KB.
Masthead Ads
- Description: High-visibility ads at the top of the YouTube homepage.
- Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher.
- File Type: JPG or PNG (without transparency).
Conclusion
YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to reach audiences effectively in 2024. Whether you want to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or target specific demographics, YouTube provides a dynamic platform for your advertising needs. Always follow Google’s advertising policies and the technical ad specs to ensure your ads perform their best. Ready to start using YouTube ads? Contact us today to get started!
MARKETING
Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists
Amazon pillows.
MARKETING
A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots
Salesforce launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products at Connections in Chicago this week. They included new Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants and Einstein Personalization.
To better understand, not only the potential impact of the new products, but the evolving Salesforce architecture, we sat down with Bobby Jania, CMO, Marketing Cloud.
Dig deeper: Salesforce piles on the Einstein Copilots
Salesforce’s evolving architecture
It’s hard to deny that Salesforce likes coming up with new names for platforms and products (what happened to Customer 360?) and this can sometimes make the observer wonder if something is brand new, or old but with a brand new name. In particular, what exactly is Einstein 1 and how is it related to Salesforce Data Cloud?
“Data Cloud is built on the Einstein 1 platform,” Jania explained. “The Einstein 1 platform is our entire Salesforce platform and that includes products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud — that it includes the original idea of Salesforce not just being in the cloud, but being multi-tenancy.”
Data Cloud — not an acquisition, of course — was built natively on that platform. It was the first product built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s new cloud infrastructure architecture. “Since Data Cloud was on what we now call the Einstein 1 platform from Day One, it has always natively connected to, and been able to read anything in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud [and so on]. On top of that, we can now bring in, not only structured but unstructured data.”
That’s a significant progression from the position, several years ago, when Salesforce had stitched together a platform around various acquisitions (ExactTarget, for example) that didn’t necessarily talk to each other.
“At times, what we would do is have a kind of behind-the-scenes flow where data from one product could be moved into another product,” said Jania, “but in many of those cases the data would then be in both, whereas now the data is in Data Cloud. Tableau will run natively off Data Cloud; Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud — they’re all going to the same operational customer profile.” They’re not copying the data from Data Cloud, Jania confirmed.
Another thing to know is tit’s possible for Salesforce customers to import their own datasets into Data Cloud. “We wanted to create a federated data model,” said Jania. “If you’re using Snowflake, for example, we more or less virtually sit on your data lake. The value we add is that we will look at all your data and help you form these operational customer profiles.”
Let’s learn more about Einstein Copilot
“Copilot means that I have an assistant with me in the tool where I need to be working that contextually knows what I am trying to do and helps me at every step of the process,” Jania said.
For marketers, this might begin with a campaign brief developed with Copilot’s assistance, the identification of an audience based on the brief, and then the development of email or other content. “What’s really cool is the idea of Einstein Studio where our customers will create actions [for Copilot] that we hadn’t even thought about.”
Here’s a key insight (back to nomenclature). We reported on Copilot for markets, Copilot for merchants, Copilot for shoppers. It turns out, however, that there is just one Copilot, Einstein Copilot, and these are use cases. “There’s just one Copilot, we just add these for a little clarity; we’re going to talk about marketing use cases, about shoppers’ use cases. These are actions for the marketing use cases we built out of the box; you can build your own.”
It’s surely going to take a little time for marketers to learn to work easily with Copilot. “There’s always time for adoption,” Jania agreed. “What is directly connected with this is, this is my ninth Connections and this one has the most hands-on training that I’ve seen since 2014 — and a lot of that is getting people using Data Cloud, using these tools rather than just being given a demo.”
What’s new about Einstein Personalization
Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016 and many of the use cases seem to have involved personalization in various forms. What’s new?
“Einstein Personalization is a real-time decision engine and it’s going to choose next-best-action, next-best-offer. What is new is that it’s a service now that runs natively on top of Data Cloud.” A lot of real-time decision engines need their own set of data that might actually be a subset of data. “Einstein Personalization is going to look holistically at a customer and recommend a next-best-action that could be natively surfaced in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud.”
Finally, trust
One feature of the presentations at Connections was the reassurance that, although public LLMs like ChatGPT could be selected for application to customer data, none of that data would be retained by the LLMs. Is this just a matter of written agreements? No, not just that, said Jania.
“In the Einstein Trust Layer, all of the data, when it connects to an LLM, runs through our gateway. If there was a prompt that had personally identifiable information — a credit card number, an email address — at a mimum, all that is stripped out. The LLMs do not store the output; we store the output for auditing back in Salesforce. Any output that comes back through our gateway is logged in our system; it runs through a toxicity model; and only at the end do we put PII data back into the answer. There are real pieces beyond a handshake that this data is safe.”
You must be logged in to post a comment Login