As mediators, none of us are particularly good (or keen) with blatant self-promotion. Somehow it doesn’t seem quite right to shout about how ‘good’ you are at being a mediator or why clients should pick you instead of, ‘the next leading brand’. And yet there is still an obvious need for a mediator to market their services in order to build their dispute resolution business.
A more subtle and gentle way of marketing your services is to promote brand awareness. Engaging with clients by utilising your brand identity helps to create leads and increase traffic going to your website and social media platforms.
Hashtags are an invaluable way of promoting your brand on social media and driving engagement. Using a hashtag helps to drive views, likes and shares. Once exclusively used on the twitter platform, hashtags have now become commonplace across other social media channels too such as facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Linkedin.
Hashtags are a powerful tool to have in your armoury. Used effectively a hashtag can direct your audience to a specific topic and help people engage in a group discussion or a subject matter that is currently trending. It is possible to search social media platforms for specific hashtags too.
For example try searching twitter for the hashtag #mediation.
What can you see? Top tweets, latest news, people (involved in or connected with mediation), photos and videos.
When I did the search I found National Family Mediation, the ICC, Family Mediation & Mentoring, Minute Mediation, Aurora Mediation, the ABA…and the list goes on. Now that I have discovered these connections I can actively look to engage with them, join in conversations, promote my services to them and raise awareness of dispute resolution.
Perform the same exercise on Linkedin. As you type in the hashtag you will also see other suggestions of related hashtags like;
You can follow a specific hashtag. Did you know that on Linkedin there are 11,868 people following the term #mediation. (At least when I wrote this!). That’s 11,868 potential clients that you could follow, connect and engage with. If you write a post on Linkedin and use the hashtag #mediation, it will help to draw attention to your post and potentially those 11,868 followers might interact with you. Imagine that conversation!
But, don’t go hashtag crazy!
Be aware that, like most things, there is a potential to overdue it. There are key rules to remember when using hashtags;
Don’t make them too long or difficult to remember.
Don’t use lots of words in one hashtag
Don’t try to be too clever, too general or too complicated.
Don’t’ use obscure terms. You need to use terms that you know people in your industry are going to search regularly. That ensures that when they do search the term, you appear.
Don’t write a social media post and make every other word or phrase a hashtag. Overkill can be off putting and detract from the content.