By Nyah Scott
Photo via Pixabay.
Hashtags and their prevalent use on social media came soon after businesses and content-creators realized they could use the elusive pound sign (#) as a gateway to bigger online communities, find relevant content, and build an easily-discoverable online presence.
What is a hashtag?
A hashtag is a word or phrase (with no spaces in between words) preceded by the ‘#’ sign. Usable on the biggest social media platforms of our day (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.), hashtags are “live,” clickable words or phrases that bundle posts tagged with the same hashtags into one feed of relevant content. They are used by businesses to expand the reach of their online content beyond their immediate followers. Users who don’t follow a business’ account can follow specific hashtags where content of interest is aggregated.
What kind of hashtags should you use?
The most effective hashtags on any social media platform are 1) short, simple, and readable, 2) relevant to the content being shared, and 3) not too general or too specific.
1) When it comes to general hashtags, a simple and readable hashtag will gain more online traction than a long and convoluted one. For example, there will be more content populating “#Vote” in comparison to “#MakeSureToVoteInNovember.” Adding hashtags that are relevant to your business and brand are key to drawing in an audience that is seeking products or services you can provide. Adding irrelevant hashtags clutters your caption or comments section, and it may create some sense of deception that some audiences will not respond positively to.
2) Find the hashtags that your community members are already using instead of attempting to insert your business elsewhere. For example, a post about a law firm would gain more traction under the “#LawyerLife” than it would under “#CatsOfInstagram” (even if the “Cats” hashtag is more populated).
3) Finally, finding a balance between generality and specificity is key to building a recognizable online brand and tracking the effectiveness of your business’ online reach. To continue our last example, a law firm may opt to tag their post with “#Lawyer” over “#Law” or “Business” because the two latter tags may not be specifically reserved for lawyers, attorneys, or legal practitioners. However, creating hashtags that are too specific may not generate enough traffic to reach other users. In this case, only using “#JohnDoeLLPLawyers,” although more accurately representative of the firm, will not increase engagement on a post because of its hyper-specificity. However, once you have a big enough online presence, you can create a personalized hashtag that users can add to their posts, producing potential user-generated content.
How do you use hashtags effectively?
The effectiveness of hashtags varies from one social media platform to another. The success of a post seems to be most contingent upon the number of hashtags utilized and the way in which those hashtags are packaged. On Twitter, it is best to keep hashtags to a minimum, not only to save space in the allotted number of characters per tweet (280) but also in light of the pattern that tweets with 1-2 hashtags are more effective than those with four or more hashtags. The effectiveness of hashtags on Instagram is nearly opposite to what is recommended for Twitter. On Instagram, posts with 5-15 hashtags have a higher probability of extended reach than posts with one or two hashtags. For Facebook and LinkedIn, hashtags should be used sparingly because platforms like these are almost exclusively based on user-curated content (i.e. users are there for content coming specifically from friends or people they’ve actively sought out to connect with). In conclusion, using 1-2 relevant hashtags works best on Facebook and LinkedIn. For all the platforms mentioned, try to incorporate your hashtags in a way that makes sense for your post. For example, a post that reads “Our company is expanding its business consulting services to Northern California!” could integrate a hashtag right into the description— “Our company is expanding its #BusinessConsulting services to Northern California!” This method saves characters and makes your post concise, as opposed to writing “Our company is expanding its business consulting services to Northern California! #BusinessConsulting.” For hashtags that don’t fit into a pre-determined post, you can just add them at the end, with some separation from the main text.
Remember this…
Hashtags, if utilized properly, can expand a business’ reach into communities where their products and services are actively sought by users and potential clientele. They allow your content to show up on the feeds of individuals who express explicit interest in the topics relevant to your company or brand.