Rechelle Balanzat, CEO and Founder of Juliette Dry Cleaners in New York City shared how hashtags can help raise business profiles on social media in a DLI webinar, February 22. “Social media has really become synonymous with digital marketing,” Balanzat said. “Your clients expect you to be on social media. People want to engage with you on their terms.”
Balanzat formerly founded a social media company before starting Juliette and applying her skills to her own company. “The way that Juliette positions itself on social media is that we’re fun and playful and we’re fashion forward and people are able to engage with us in that way. Yes, we do laundry and drycleaning but I naturally love fashion so when you see that other side of our company, when you see the other side of our company that is what you’re seeing on social media.”
Hashtags are clickable words or phrases with no spaces preceded by the pound sign (#).
Hashtags were introduced when Twitter launched, Balanzat said. Soon after the other social media platforms incorporated them. “The whole purpose of a hashtag is to index the conversation. When you click on a hashtag you can see every piece of content that is relevant to that keyword or that topic.” Now it’s a part of pop culture and is part of how many younger people communicate now, she said.
Balanzat shared how hashtag results appear in a search. She said it’s important to recognize that hashtags do not necessarily increase a message’s reach just by using them. “If you’re reaching 100 people today or you have 11,000 people following you, that you’re going to increase your reach,” she said. “It’s not about increasing your reach, it’s about telling the social media platform what your content is about,” she said.
Balanzat shared examples of how she uses hashtags and offered creative ideas on how drycleaning business owners could employ them. Watch her presentation here: youtu.be/_G8uYh7cDGE
