Consider creating your own hashtag. To encourage people to use it, make sure it's in your profile as well, your FB page, newsletter, live events, etc. If you do press, mention it there too. Be proactive about pushing it beyond an individual post.
When you hashtag your content, think 50% general/ 50% branded.
Hashtags are particularly important to the algorithm on Instagram, followed closely by Tumblr and Twitter. A study done by Trackmaven* on Instagram suggests if you have under 1000 followers, 11 hashtags is your sweet spot; if you have over 1000, 4-5 hashtags should do you just fine.
Not sure which tags to use? Think of one relevant tag and then search for it on whatever platform you are using. Within those results, see what tags other users incorporated into their posts and borrow from their expertise.
Follow what's trending and incorporate that into your comments/hashtag strategy (only if it's applicable - don't add for the sake of it or your users will call you out on it). Frequent the Explore page of your social app to see what's trending, as well as keeping up with general internet trends. Reddit (Hot Tab), Tumblr (Explore Page > Trending Tab), and BuzzFeed News are always reliable sources for getting to the heart of virality on the internet.
The second you try to be authentic, you aren't. Just be you!
Control your profile. Facebook: Tag/Untag yourself from individual posts. Or head to Privacy > Timeline and Tagging to review tags before they appear. Instagram: You can't remove tagged photos of you entirely (should you ever want to), but you can choose "edit tags" and select the ones you want to remove and choose "hide from profile", in case any negative nancies come your way. Another tip is to approve photo tags before the content shows up on your IG (Options, Photos Of You, Add Manually)
Play off the local scene, particularly if you are a local business. Within Instagram or Facebook you can search "places" and see what people are tagging in your local area. If there's something that works, you can riff off that for inspo.
If you don't know where to start, set a goal to post 3-4x a week.
Consistency can be in the form of frequency of post, hashtags, voice, even colors
Fast Company and Curalate** did an interesting study on images. Light images generate 24% more likes than dark images, high amount on background space generates 29% more likes than the subject taking up the whole image, blue based images get 24% more likes than red based images, a single dominant color in your post gets 17% more likes than multiple colors, low saturation outperforms moderate saturation, and textured images outperform smooth images. Take it or leave it, but if you want to get all scientific about your social media - pretty interesting!
Identify Influencers or companies/people of interest within your space. Friend/Like (Facebook) or Follow/Turn On Post Notifications (Instagram) to be notified every time they share new content. Give them shout outs or like their content as a way to start interacting with them and building credibility/interest with their audience. Comment or even Message can go a long way in building a relationship.
Micro-influencers are considered the loftiest target. They are people with between 10-100k followers. Once influencers get too massive, their like rate percentage tends to decrease.
Share user-generated content. It's an easy way to increase relationship building. Consider even hosting a sweepstakes/contest - get users to use your hashtag to be featured on your social media page.
*http://pages.trackmaven.com/rs/trackmaven/images/TM_Fortune500_Instagram_Report.pdf
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