Hashtags allow you to contact people other than your direct followers. Using hashtags, you may start, join, and participate in new social media conversations. The more retweets, comments, likes, and shares your social media marketing posts acquire, the more visible your brand becomes. Hashtags allow social media sites and users to categorize material while also increasing the discoverability of your social posts.
If you know your target audience is on social media, you should be there as well! However, there are literally millions of people on social media that aren’t in your target demographic. Hashtags can also assist you sift out those people and tap into the conversations of your target group. Because some hashtags are more popular than others, it’s vital that you use hashtags that fit the image of your brand. To determine this, conduct some research to determine which hashtags are popular among the community you wish to reach. Also, if you are trying to establish a new hashtag for your community to utilize, keep it basic and straightforward because people will not use long or complicated hashtags.
Another important aspect to consider when using hashtags is how they are used on various social media platforms. Here’s a cheat sheet to help you with hashtag interaction on each social platform (data collected by Buffer):
Use of Twitter Hashtags
On Twitter, using hashtags can give you a huge advantage. Using hashtags can result in a 100% boost in engagement for individuals and a 50% increase in engagement for brands.
- Tweets with 1-2 hashtags receive double the engagement as those without.
- In addition, they receive 55% more retweets.
- Tweets with more than two hashtags, on the other hand, had a 17% decline in engagement.
Participating in Twitter Chats is another enjoyable and productive way to interact with hashtags on Twitter. Twitter Chats are public conversations that revolve around a single hashtag, allowing you to follow along and join in the conversation. They are usually recurring and on certain issues in order to regularly connect people and their specialised interests.
Use of Hashtags on Instagram
Instagram employs hashtags to organize photographs, making hashtags an effective tool for increasing the exposure of your posts and attracting new followers. Many people, though, wonder, “How many hashtags should I use on Instagram?” The answer is that you can use up to 30 hashtags per post, however, the best quantity depends on the size of the hashtag’s audience.
Instagram posts with 11 or more hashtags garner the most engagement. It is, nevertheless, critical to select hashtags that are relevant to your content and audience. To accomplish this, you can utilize tools such as hashtag generators to help you generate a list of hashtags to use on your posts.
Use of hashtags on Facebook
It’s evident that Twitter and Instagram are the most popular sites for hashtags. So, where does Facebook fall into the hashtag picture?
- Posts on Facebook with no hashtags perform better than those with a hashtag.
- This isn’t to say you should abandon hashtags on Facebook entirely–it’s best to test them first with your target audience.
Facebook continues to work on making its site more hashtag-friendly: You may search for specific hashtags in your search box, click on hashtags from other sites like Instagram, and make posts directly from the hashtag feed and search results.
Use of Hashtags on Linkedin
Even the most professional social networks employ hashtags. Hashtags on LinkedIn are now tapable and connect to search results, allowing you to find other postings with the same hashtag. When you include a hashtag in a post, it becomes public. You can also search for a hashtag to see which public postings have it.
- Similarly to Facebook, you don’t want to overburden with hashtags–one or two is fine.
- Because hashtag functionality is still relatively new on LinkedIn, utilizing or not using hashtags does not appear to have a substantial influence as of now.
Finally, if you’re using social media to reach a certain audience, employ relevant hashtags for the greatest results. Who knows, you might even come across crucial words that have the potential to become viral and help your company thrive!