Here’s a fun fact that I may or may not have just made up: the word hashtag is being used 1000% more since the birth of Twitter in 2006. Other social channels have joined the fun with hashtags also being used on Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, Vine and others! If your health care facility hasn’t engaged on social media yet, I sure hope you plan to very soon.

Benefits of Hashtagging

Hashtags are a great way to build your digital brand. It makes topics and conversations you start or join easier for the audience to find and engage with. Joining an already trending topic is a great way to get your content and brand in front of a qualified audience. Starting your own hashtag and seeing great engagement from the audience–or even having it become a trending topic–lets you know the quality of your audience and brand awareness.

Search engines (Google in particular) are beginning to incorporate hashtags more within the search engine results pages. So now using hashtags within your social copy can place your content higher and even link back to your website on more results pages.

New to Twitter? Here’s a Refresher on Hashtags!

• Place the hashtag symbol # before a relevant keyword or phrase in the tweet to categorize that Tweet and help the audience find similar content within the Twitter search.
• By clicking on a hashtag in any message, it’ll show you all other tweets marked with that keyword.
• Hashtags can be placed anywhere within the tweet. Feel free to place in the beginning, middle or end. My tip is, if your hashtagged keyword isn’t naturally within the copy, then place the hashtag at the end.
• Hashtags that become very popular are considered Trending Topics.

Now that you know the benefits of using Hashtags and have some best practices, let’s take a look at some of the most popular hashtags within the healthcare industry.

10 Great Hashtags to Use if You’re in Healthcare

• #DigitalHealth
• #FOAMed (Free open access meducaton)
• #mhealth (mobile health)
• #hcsm (healthcare social media)
• #MedEd (Medical Education)
• #HealthTalk
• #doctors20 (How Doctors are Usng Social Media and Web 2.0 Tools)
• #4patients
• #HCR (Health Care Reform)
• #Hitsm (Health Care IT Social Media)

These suggestions are a great place to join an already trending conversation and engage with the audience. Share your knowledge and links to your website, where they can learn more. Half of the work is done already, now go get started! #GoodLuck

Source: mktgessentials.com