Best Practices in Using Hashtags for every Social Media
Gone are the days when hashtags used to be just on Twitter. But now, in all social media places, almost everywhere you’ll find hashtags to be one of the most popular elements to be included in a post or any social media content.
Moreover, brands and marketers capitalized on it to boost their social media engagement and reach.
But are you using it properly? Do hashtags really boost engagement and reach? Is it really important?
If you are a marketer or a business owner capitalizing on using hashtags in your social media, here are the best practices in using hashtags you need to know to fully utilize the use of this pound symbol #.
Best Practices in Using Hashtags (#)
- Always start with the pound sign (#) and avoid using spaces, punctuations or symbols between words so your hashtag can work.
- Make sure your account is public when using hashtags. If not, your hashtaged content won’t be seen by non-followers.
- Avoid stringing too many words. Hashtags that are short and easy to remember tend to perform better.
- Use relevant and specific hashtags. If your hashtag is too complicated or obscure, it will be hard to find and social media users won’t likely to use it.
- Always limit the number of your hashtags. Using too many hashtags can make your content look spammy.
- Capitalize the first letter of each word so it is easy to read and distinguish. Hashtags are not case sensitive so it is better to organize your hashtags this way.
- Use hashtags that fit your brand and avoid jumping on every hot trend out there.
Best Practices in using Hashtags on every Social Media
According to coschedule, here are the recommended number of hashtags to use on every social media to get optimum performance.
Are you using hashtags on Facebook to boost engagement?
Did you know that according to the data gathered by CoSchedule, hashtags on Facebook do not contribute to increased engagement? Which means, skipping hashtags on your Facebook posts will do your brand better.
A study by SocialBaker showed that posts with hashtags only has 0.80% viral reach, while posts without hashtags had higher which is 1.30% viral reach.
This must be because Facebook does not recognize hashtags in the search bar. So if you are looking for something on Facebook and using the search bar, you better type or search without the pound sign.
So the only way to find hashtags on Facebook is to directly click on the hashtag that is in the post.
If you still want to use hashtags on Facebook, better go for the bare minimum of one to two per post. According to Digital Information World, posts with one or two hashtags get more engagements and interaction.
Hashtags originated on Twitter. But you should skip using too many on a single tweet because there or more hashtags per tweet can decrease your engagement by almost 17%. On the other hand, using one or two hashtags per post tend to grow your engagement by almost 21%.
Moreover, when using hashtags on your Twitter bio, you should use it appropriately. Don’t spam your entire bio with hashtags.
Unlike Facebook and Twitter, you can use a lot of hashtags on Instagram. In fact, 11 plus hashtags get the most interactions. However, be careful in using too much hashtag as it will make your content looks spammy when overdone. Also, use hashtags only that are related to your content or brand.
The optimal number of hashtags to use on LinkedIn is one to two. One thing you need to remember when using hashtags on LinkedIn is that it is a professional platform, so your hashtags should be professional too. You can follow hashtags on LinkedIn to know what type of content people or your competitors use with that hashtag.
Using hashtags on your pin’s description does not really yield result. That is because when you search certain items on Pinterest, the search results will show content that has that keyword whether it is a hashtag, title or description.
However, if you still choose to use hashtags on Pinterest, less is more. You don’t want to populate your content with too many hashtags because Pinterest will demote the value of your pins. Which is something you don’t want to happen.
YouTube
It is recommended that hashtags on YouTube should only be used to categorize your content so it can be found by topic. Moreover, your keywords should also be the foundation of your hashtags.
Hashtags are also often used in the comments section. Which means, to increase the visibility of your YouTube videos, leave a comment with relevant hashtags.
Benefits of using hashtags
1. Increased engagement
Using hashtags on your post means that you are contributing to a conversation that is happening on a social media platform. The hashtags that you use will help your posts be visible within that conversation.
This can lead to increase engagement in your social media brand and can invite new followers.
2. Promote your brand
Creating your own branded hashtags can help you build your business brand and drive conversation about it.
3. Support causes and social issues
Using hashtags that are centred on causes and social issues is a way to show what types of causes your business supports. This can drive engagement and following because this will show that your brand has a vision in supporting important causes and social issues.
4. Add context to your social media content
Sometimes, it is hard to think of a caption to put on your social media post. That’s when hashtags are useful. Because they help you contextualize what you want or are trying to say without explaining or using repetitive captions.
5. Help you find new target audience
Hashtags can be a good way to help new users find your brand on social media. For example, using #digitalmarketing, someone who follows that hashtag will see your post in their feed and can potentially follow you.
So these are the best practices in using hashtags and I hope the above content helped you to understand hashtags better to help you in promoting your brand on social media.
If you want to know more tips and best practices on social media management, you may read our blog posts on “Tips in Managing Social Media Pages”
I also recently created “How to Optimize Your Facebook Page with the New Facebook Update”
If you have questions or other things I missed on this post, feel free to comment below or message me at dgstrategists@gmail.com.
You can also call/text me if you need to discuss your social media management at +63928-223-8416 or simply hit the messenger icon below and I will personally be the one to chat with you.
Thank you for reading!
About the Author
Crisel Blenda Fernandez is a digital marketing strategist specialising in content marketing and social media management. She loves writing, experimenting, researching, and discovering new things in the digital marketing world. She is a Hubspot Content Writing Certified and a coffee lover. If not writing, she is busy playing with her daughter (singing Finger Family and I’m a little teapot) or binge-eating with her husband.