Blog Post #4- The Hashtag Challenge

For the hashtag challenge, I used the hashtag #OhSoSweet on both my blog’s Twitter and Instagram page. My blog is a New England travel blog and this past weekend I went  Downtown for Salem’s 14th annual, So Sweet Chocolate & Ice Sculpture Festival. I used this hashtag to promote the event and the related blog post I published on Sunday. I don’t have a ton of followers on both channels (Twitter-39 and Instagram-42), but one of my goals for this course is to learn how to utilize social media to gain more readers. 

Here are my Twitter analytics: 

Impressions-48, Total Engagements-2, Likes-1, Hashtags Click-1.

Impressions-32, Total Engagements-1, Link Clicks-1.

Impressions-38, Total Engagements-5, Detail Expands-5.

 

Impressions-282, Total Engagements-46, Media Engagements-38,  Likes-3,  Retweets-2,  Link Clicks-1, Detail Expands- 1, Profile Clicks-1.

Here are my Instagram analytics 

To me, hashtags have two purposes. They can be used to be ironic or they can be used to introduce people similar to you to your social media. I have used hashtags before this assignment to promote my blog. The common hashtags I use are #NewEngland and #travelblogger. I will also always hashtag the city I profile as well as the state. For this assignment, I only used one hashtag as opposed to several. 

I didn't gain any new followers this week and based on the statistics of my previous posts, I get more attention on social media, be it Twitter or Instagram, when I use more than one hashtag. My statistics also increase when much larger accounts retweet or re-gram me. I got a lot of attention for my Star Wars Twitter post because LifeAtSSU re-tweeted it and they have over 1000 followers. In the past, I have noticed that my followers and readership goes up when places I profile share the link of my blog to their followers. Additionally, my statistics increase when I include a picture in my tweets. 

All and all, I think the best way for me to increase my audience is to be more proactive on social media. In general, I only tweet and use Instagram when I publish new posts. I think if I reach out to more bloggers and tweet/Instagram on a consistent basis, I will get better results. I think hashtags are a great way to get attention, but you can’t rely on them solely to be seen.