Are you someone who wonders why people use hashtags? Or are you just another confused individual, like me some time ago, who had no idea about hashtags? More importantly, how to use them appropriately? Fortunately, my journey as a social media expert and digital marketer has helped me learn a lot of things about social media. I mean, why does social media exist? How has it revolutionized the whole marketing process? The potential it holds and the use of hashtags which has become an integral part of social media.
You may constantly see on social media and public outlets such as newspaper and magazine hashtags trending. For example, #abc or #123, etc. Now, just as I long back, you must have a question: why are they trending? Simple explanation - Because hashtags work. Whether it is promotion, marketing, and business, etc., hashtags work for everything. After all, hashtags are the ultimate feature that can potentially increase the visibility and reach of your social media content that you have posted or shared on your social media account. But another question arises here: What are hashtags? Let’s see it below.
Reasons to convince you why has-tag marketing is important
What are Hashtags?
Have you ever played tic-tac-toe? One where you have to form a straight line or diagonal sequence of three “Xs” or three “0s” to win. Hashtags look like a tic-tac-toe board. It can also be defined as a pound sign which looks like a #.
Hashtags have various uses, however, their presence is more felt in social media. On social media, hashtags are used to draw attention, connection, promotion, and organization. The use of hashtags gained popularity on Twitter. These users used hashtags as a means to find people, follow people, and build connections with them through healthy conversations.
Oftentimes, people have asked where the use of hashtags first happened. Some Twitter archaeologists have seemed to have identified the first time a hashtag or the pound sign was used. Chris Messina is notably the username of the person who had used the “#” for the first time.
Furthermore, despite its origin on Twitter, the use of hashtags since then has spread to other social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest, etc.
Overall, it has now become an integral part of social media. The main reason is the ease with which anyone can create a hashtag. All one has to do is remember three things to create a hashtag.
No spaces
No punctuation
No special characters
Why Use Hashtags?
While the creation of the hashtag is now sorted, let’s come to the next important part - Why use hashtags? People, on social media, use hashtags for a number of reasons. They are as follows:
To Get Found by Your Target Audience
People use hashtags to find their target audience. How?
When you use a hashtag it makes your posts searchable by anyone on the given platform. Other people can look for their interests, subjects and topics by using hashtags. Thus, it allows your post to get discovered much more easily. In short, it increases the chance of your post getting found more easily on the shared platform.
Hashtags Improve CTR (Click through rates)
As per the number of surveys, it has been proven that hashtags can bring as much as twice the engagement, in minimum, when compared to posts without hashtags. So, if you are struggling with your click-through rates, you know how to fix it now.
Enhances Research Capability
Hashtags, overall, are also a great means to do improved research work. With the help of relevant and key hashtags, you can comfortably find your research relevant content on the platform. One way to do so is to search with the topic used as a hashtag.
Improves Connectivity
One of the reasons people use social media is to connect with like-minded people. Like-minded people mean the ones with whom you share the same kind of interest or work background. People do so become an active part of a larger conversation and learn more about the topics they want to learn.
Hashtags as a Humor
Humor as we know it has become a great means to gain people's attention over an issue. People use it to show support and even rebel against an ongoing trend such as a Government decision about taxes.
So, these are the most important reasons people use hashtags. You can also think of some creative ways to make use of hashtags.
How to Use It
By now, you must have a clear understanding of what are hashtags, do they work, and why you should use them in social media? However, we are still away from the most important knowledge - How to use it? Let's learn about it together.
The use of hashtags, as I have mentioned above, originated in Twitter as far as social media is concerned. The use of hashtags in every platform is, literally, the secret sauce for enhanced engagement. For example, on Instagram hashtags are a great tool for marketing, i.e, popularly known as Instagram marketing. And as I said, secret sauce, evidently there's no easy method to get it done successfully on any platform. Therefore, I, here, bring you some strategies to use them efficiently on the topmost platforms.
Hashtags Strategy for Instagram and Twitter
In Instagram and Twitter, you can primarily use hashtags to gain ideal followers or to market yourself or your products and services. So, effectively do it - you must start with "broad hashtags." These hashtags must represent you or your products and services which you want to promote. You must niche down hashtags to keyword details that your target audiences must be using to find your products and services.
For example, some of the popular hashtags on Instagram are:
#ReelsonInstagram
#SocialMedia
#OnlinMarketing
Hashtags Strategy for LinkedIn
LinkedIn is another platform where hashtags have gained immense usage and popularity. LinkedIn users, mainly newbies, should always use hashtags after their posts in the comment section. The reason behind it is to allow the user to receive more engagement on their posts. More importantly, engagements often turn to followers. Followers are essential for the growth of your LinkedIn profile.
Another advantage of using hashtags on LinkedIn is the platform has, what we can describe as, hashtag communities. You can use such hashtags to directly target your required communities. Also, you can use a combination of popular hashtags to amplify your post's reach and engagement.
Hashtags Use for YouTube
It may come as a surprise, but YouTube also has joined the hashtag bandwagon recently. The primary use of hashtags on YouTube is to organize similar and relevant content for easy finding. Also, by using hashtags, you can eliminate the need of creating playlists for each topic. You can simply add multiple hashtags to make your content comfortably discoverable.
Hashtags Use for Facebook
While people do use hashtags on Facebook, my advice to you would be - Don't. Yes, don't use hashtags on Facebook as it still does not contribute a lot to Facebook.
How Many Hashtags to Use?
It has been a debate for some time as to how many hashtags one should use. Now there isn't a clear-cut answer to it. You can use as many as thirty hashtags in a post. But, again I will suggest not doing it. Your hashtags should have relevance to the content you're sharing.
Look at hashtags in a way, like each hashtag is a way to make new connections. Therefore, do not clutter your post with excessive hashtags. More importantly, use them as keywords. So, 4-5 well-researched hashtags should remain sufficient to provide an added boost to your post. Also, you can avoid using hashtags in the main post and instead use them in the comment section.
#LastWords
So, this was all about the hashtags. Hopefully, it has now provided you with enough reasons and clarity on why and how to use hashtags on social media. However, I'll leave with a word of caution that some hashtags have different connotations. So, before using a hashtag ensure that you have checked its purpose of it.
