Everyone knows hashtags are key when it comes to expanding your reach and building a following for your brand. But, do you know which hashtags you should be using? We've got your hashtag cheat sheet. No matter your specialty, we've got you covered.Some of these may not be the TOP hashtag in the category, but they are the hashtags that attract the most attention of your desired audience. While #Food has 147,782,320 uses, your post may get lost in the over-saturated feed, #Foodstagram on the other hand, has 4,687,200 tags and will catch the eye of the consumer you are trying to reach.We recommend using up to 7 hashtags, and try changing them up with your posts. This will get your posts seen by a broad spectrum of users and keep you from spamming the hashtags feed.

Want more tips and tricks for how to dominate social this year with Data, Creative and Amplification? Download our 2016 Social Media Survival Guide.

What you say about yourself matters much less than what others are saying about you, which is why we launched StoryCafe today. It’s an Influencer Marketing company headquartered in Los Angeles that matches Food & Restaurant brands with the right influencers so that they can amplify their voice across social.We believe that highly targeted, relevant advertising such as Facebook and Twitter work really well, but the vast majority of advertising is becoming significantly less effective. The continuous growth of social networks has made Word of Mouth much more prevalent than it was just two years ago. People are now listening much less to traditional ads and much more to other people, when making their purchasing decisions.According to Nielsen, less than 50% of customers believe in TV commercials, yet nearly 100% believe in advice from their friends and 70% trust online opinions. In other words, the messenger matters, particularly if he or she is authentic. Influencers are further down the sales funnel and have a much more intimate connection with consumers which translates to the brand.We’re really excited about our new business and we are currently working with a number of companies to place their messages in the hands of the most relevant influencers from a database of nearly 100,000 pinners, bloggers, viners, snappers, tweeters, instagramers, etc.

Our first campaign is a Valentine’s Day Promotion for California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) entitled “What We Do For Love”. Consumers who post a picture and caption to Instagram, Twitter or Facebook with #CPKLoveSweeps can earn a chance to win CPK for a year through a $2,500 gift certificate. To add buzz and influence to the campaign, we reached out to contestants from The Bachelor to post pictures and captions that express the crazy things they do for love.Influencers participating include Courtney Robertson (Former Villain and Winner of Season 16) and Chris Bukowski (Notorious Bad Boy of Season 8). We also added popular Wedding Blogger, Jen Campbell, and others. All photos and captions are captured in a gallery along side CPK’s Valentine’s Day Dinner Special at bit.ly/CPKLove.For more detail, take a look at our website.Want more tips and tricks for how to dominate social this year with Data, Creative and Amplification? Download our 2016 Social Media Survival Guide.

Social media buying is a game of inches. Everyone is playing on a similar playing field, so possessing superior social analysis technology is the only way to differentiate yourself from a competitor. Socialtyze was able to break out from the pack by harnessing the data of Crimson Hexagon.Download our Crimson Hexagon case study to see how Socialtyze uses this tool to push our clients success.Want more tips and tricks for how to dominate social this year with Data, Creative and Amplification? Download our 2016 Social Media Survival Guide.

Happy Holidays from your friends at Socialtyze and here’s to a wonderfully Social 2015!Want more tips and tricks for how to dominate social this year with Data, Creative and Amplification? Download our 2016 Social Media Survival Guide.

Organic Reach continues to drop. Social@Oglivy measured that organic reach has dropped from 16% in 2012 to 6% in February 2014 for smaller pages- and just 2% for pages with 500K or more fans.In 2015, Facebook has promised that organic reach will shrink even further.So, what’s the value Facebook Fans? Virtually nothing, right? We should all pull our pages from Facebook in protest like Eat24 did with its Facebook Break up letter.Well, Not exactly.Why?First, you need to think about fans differently. It’s not about the free organic reach, and it’s much more about the data.Two of the biggest challenges with good marketing is identifying the right people and finding a way to retarget them so you can build a relationship over time. It is no different than a new friendship. Once you find someone you like, your relationship builds with him or her, with every contactFacebook Fans are most likely customers of yours and they have selected you as a brand that they like. If organic reach never existed, marketers would be thrilled with the ability to target these fans through paid media.It is only because the ‘free lunch’ of organic reach is over that it is hard for brands and agencies to make the adjustment to paying for impressions and conversions.I say get over it. Stop complaining and run ads to reach your best customers. Here are reasons why -

Fans and Fan/Super Fan Look-alikes perform at 230% and 410% better than than all “other targeting groups” in producing downstream conversions including app installs, e-mails, sales, sweepstakes entries, etc.. Other targeting categories included highly defined interest groups, friends of fans, and custom audiences.So, what does that mean in terms of dollars and cents?It means that if fan basses are built correctly, the Fan and Fan Look-alike media is about ¼ to ½ the cost of other targeted media.Or, said another way, a brand with a large fan base can spend 25 to 50 cents on the dollar to get the same results as a brand with a very small fan base.Owned media works. The investment in growing a powerful fan base yields an asset that pays large dividends over time.We recommend to our clients that they allocate a certain percentage of their social toward building fans and followers and measure it less on the value of organic reach and more on the value of paid media. In essence, how much are they saving because on the ongoing investment in this asset.Want more tips and tricks for how to dominate social this year with Data, Creative and Amplification? Download our 2016 Social Media Survival Guide.