Hashtags allow people to follow topics they are interested in online. They can allow you to grow on social media and increase your reach.
Hashtags increase the discoverability of a conversation or post. They are a unique way of categorizing content. People use them to explore concepts and to find new accounts to follow. They might be interested in finding new information or purchasing a particular product.
Creating Hashtags
Hashtags can be created for a particular event, place, campaign, company or product. You’ll want to select a hashtag that is simple, relevant and memorable.
If you are creating a new hashtag for your business, then it’s best to double-check your shortlist and check they are not already being used. Look for words and combinations of two or three words, that are easy to remember and spell.
Hashtags on Twitter
Hashtags describe the focus of the chat on Twitter. Trending hashtags are popular topics that you may like to participate in. It’s best to use only one or two hashtags on Twitter.
You can search Hashtags on Twitter via this page: https://twitter.com/search-home
Hashtags on Facebook
Add hashtags which people might be already searching on to allow new audiences to see your content and business. Facebook searches on content, so hashtags aren’t essential.
Hashtags on Instagram
Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags. Some people recommend you only use around five hashtags, and post them in the comments section.
Hashtags on YouTube
Hashtags on YouTube allow to add some metadata to your video, so users can find the right content they want to watch. They currently appear between your video and the video title in blue. These links are clickable so you can see related videos. These are best added to your video description at the end. It’s recommended you use your three strongest hashtags first.
Hashtags on LinkedIn
You can search on hashtags in LinkedIn. You can see how many people follow each hashtag. Then you can select the Follow button if want to be kept update on this topic. These topics will now appear more frequently on your news feed. LinkedIn recommends using one or two hashtags only.
Hashtags on TikTok
Due to the limited space on TikTok captions, most people use from one to five hashtags. But I prefer to read what the video is about with a descriptive caption. Some people get around this by adding this information to the first comment.
Website Tags Are Not Hashtags
Websites use metadata to help search engines catalogue pages and index pages correctly. Website tags are used to create categories and groups of similar pages. Generally, you should avoid using hashtags as tags as they may create a mess of your categories. You just need to add your list of tags with commas between each word.
Best Practice Using Hashtags
Trending hashtags are always changing, so don’t forget to swap them around. Add them whenever you want your content to do well.
Social media platforms penalize accounts who use their hashtags in spammy repetitive ways. Avoid using the super popular hashtags. You might like to conduct hashtag research to investigate different keywords further and look at your metrics to analysis how well each post does.