Digital MarketingSocial Media
Hashtags are trend, everyone loves them, everyone uses them and of course in all social networks. So what’s the right way of using hashtags? The simple way to understand hashtags is to know the reason of their existence, the best practices and what you want to gain from it. For every social network there’s different reason.
The History of Hashtags
The first hashtag was used in 2007 by Chris Messina. He posted a tweet, with the idea of grouping discussions. In 2009 Twitter followed his idea and introduced hashtags. Facebook followed this idea back in 2013.
How Hashtags work
Hashtags are being used in order to categorize social media updates. The symbol # with a keyword hyperlinked in social media allows for search and find relevant content related to the keyword. For instance “#digitalMarketing” by clicking it on any social media post you can see all posts related to Digital Marketing. This is how the content is discoverable and allow people to connect with other minded social media users!
Here’s an overview of how hashtags are being used on all major social networks
Hashtags on Twitter are part of a tweet. Either included right into the tweet text or after the tweet text. Each is shown in the color you have chose your Twitter profile. So, they are highlighted and catch the eye.
Best Practices: Tweets with 1 or two hashtags get more attention than tweets with less or more hashtags.
Choose hashtags that have something to do with the topic of your tweet. Don’t just use trending hashtags that have nothing to say with the content you share!
Facebook was a bit late adopting hashtags (2013) and never gain the popularity that seen on Twitter. People on Facebook usually add some fun keywords rather using them for marketing purposes. They are added to your post text and you need to find the best hashtags yourself!
Best Practices: Do not over do it! Keep the number of hashtags bellow three. Too many hashtags cause a serious drop in engagement and can hurt your marketing.
Instagram lives on the use of hashtags. The right hashtags can drive engagements from people who never heard of you and it’s one way to grow and target your audience among increasing the engagement on your posts. Add as many hashtags to your posts as you like!
Best Practices: Make sure they match the content of your post and Instagram helps you find the best hashtag while you are typing a hashtag.
It is a debate whether to use hashtags on Pinterest on not. Some will say YES! Some say TRY! Some Say NO!
Pinterest supports hashtags. So if you find a hashtag in a pin description you can click and find more content related to this hashtag. However, in bios, board descriptions and board titles hashtags are not supported.
Best Practices: Add relevant hashtags to the descriptions of pins but don’t have many of them. It will negatively impact your ranking and will not give you extra boost for your post.
Youtube
Hashtags on YouTube can be searched for keywords and key phrases that will give you results sorted by secret algorithms based on ratings, relevance and engagement.
Best Practices: Add hashtags to the description of our video or in a comment. Don’t overload your video description use few of them that are relevant keywords!
Most networks excepting Instagram, more hashtags will not give you more success. Be careful with their use and always use them with a purpose!
