Understanding and utilizing hashtags in social media will take your engagement to the next level. It is an effective marketing strategy that helps build target audiences while they are engaging in content they care about. It is a way to categorize your content so people can find it easily – think of it as a search engine for users to find what they like. It’s important to use relevant hashtags for your brand so hashtag research is important before implementing them into your social strategy.

How to Create a Hashtag:

A hashtag is the pound symbol, #, followed by a keyword or phrase without spaces. For example, if you put the # before ‘Cars of Instagram’ and remove the spaces, it becomes a hashtag: #carsofinstagram.

Why Should You Implement Hashtags for Your Dealership?

Using targeted Instagram hashtags will help your profile stand out. When you add relevant hashtags to your captions or comments, your content will appear in the hashtag feed of anyone searching for it. It helps your posts reach a wider audience.

Key benefits of implementing hashtags:

• • Easy to Search – hashtags make you searchable, which increases the chances of new users discovering your dealership and engaging with your brand.

  • Building Target Audiences – they bring in your specific audience and people who are interested in your type of content.

  • Build Relationships – you can connect with your current customers and potential new customers.

  • Branding – you can create brand-specific hashtags about your dealership, inventory, incentives, events, awards, and more.

  • Measure Performance – you can track the hashtag usage to see what is performing best.

Beneficial Hashtags for Your Dealership:

As an automotive digital marketing agency, we know that finding the right hashtags to use takes a little research to see which ones fit your profile and brand best. Search the top posts and competitors using car hashtags for relevant hashtags.

See below for some recommended hashtags for dealerships:

• • Top hashtags: #cars, #carsofinstagram, #cartalk, #carshow, #supercar, #classiccar, #autocross

  • Niche-specific hashtags to target car enthusiasts: #tuning, #caraudio, #motorheads

  • Brand and model specific are great to target loyal customers: #Subaru, #Toyota, #Honda, #Chevrolet. #SubaruImpreza, ToyotaTacoma, #HondaCivic, #ChevroletBlazer

  • General automotive hashtags: #dealershiplife, #autoindustry, #dealership, #usedcars, #carsforsale, #cardealer, #autosales, #usedcarsforsale, #carshopping, #luxurycars, #forsale, #autosales, #carstagram, #carfinance

  • Campaign specific: #ChevyTruckMonth, #SubaruSharetheLove

Tips for Each Social Media Platform:

Hashtags originated on Twitter, now X, but have taken off on all social media platforms now. The usage of hashtags can vary throughout each platform. See below for a few tips for each platform.

X (Twitter):

On X (Twitter), they can serve as both a humor add-on, and a click-through link to threads of conversations. It can also help you populate in Twitter searches. It is recommended to use maximum of two hashtags per tweet. Explore using the trending topics or help connect your brand with trending topics. Keep the short and simple, but easy to remember. Keep the hashtags relevant to the content in your tweet.

Instagram:

Instagram is a high-performing platform for car enthusiasts, dealerships, and brands. It is advised to use between 3-5 hashtags on your posts, but Instagram does allow up to 30. The best number for your strategy will depend on the size of the audience in the hashtag, but you can also try implementing the remaining hashtags in a comment. Use 3-5 within the caption itself and use the first comment for a handful of other relevant hashtags. Be mindful that you are always using hashtags that pair well with your content. You can add hashtags to Instagram stories as well, these will show up in the results too.

LinkedIn:

With a newer update, LinkedIn has joined the tappable hashtags, like the other platforms, they will lead to search results with other posts that used the same tag. Your post will automatically become public, so it populates. It is recommended to use only 1-2 hashtags on LinkedIn.

Facebook:

Best practices for Facebook are joining trending topics and conversations and incorporating hashtags into sentences. You want to be aware of how many hashtags you add to your post as adding too many can come across as spam. 3-5 hashtags are ideal for your Facebook captions, keeping them at a low amount.

TikTok:

Hashtags on TikTok have the potential to increase visibility, reach a wider audience, go viral, increase your followers and brand exposure. As usual, you want to use tags that are relevant to your content. You can use up to 30 hashtags per video, but it’s best to stick to 4-6.

Take Your Social Media to the Next Level

At Digital to Dealer Direct, our Social Media Management service is designed to elevate your brand, expand your audience, and grow your platform. Give us a call for more information at 877-958-4524.