These days, no matter which platform you favor, or who’s post you’re viewing, you’ll often see these weird collections of words, phrases and sometimes numbers all smooshed together with the pound symbol (#) preceding them. 

These are hashtags. And they’re vital to your marketing success on social media. 

Familiar but confused? If the thought of grappling with hashtags on top of algorithms, likes, and follows breaks you into a cold sweat, fear not! In this post, I’m going to demystify them for you.

The birth of hashtags

The hashtag as we now know it came into being in 2007 on what was then Twitter. According to Wikipedia, hashtag use on social media was the brainchild of Chris Messina who suggested using the pound symbol, or hash (#), to group related Tweets together. The symbol was already commonly used by Internet Relay Chat networks to label groups and topics.

Since then, hashtag use has spread and evolved beyond anyone’s expectations. Its use is ubiquitous across platforms and serves many different functions. 

You can use them to:

• Set context for a post and reduce the length of your caption and character count
• Join a trend
• Show support for a group or movement
• Help people find your business in search
• Boost your local SEO by including location-specific information
• Give people a way to discover your business when they follow a specific hashtag
• Disclose sponsor partnerships if you have affiliate relationships with other companies

Why you need to be using them

If you want your social media marketing to be effective — and that includes getting your stuff in front of new eyeballs — it needs to be discoverable. And hashtags are a VERY good way of doing that.

Hashtags allow you to categorize your posts, so they’re more easily found. Why? Because in general, no matter which platform you favor, hashtags are searchable. This means that if you use relevant, popular, and specific hashtags, your posts are likely to show up when someone searches for those hashtag topics.

How to use hashtags

The very best hashtags are sticky, short, specific and relevant. 

If you’re struggling to find good hashtags to use for your posts, put yourself in your ideal client’s head. Ask yourself: 

• What might they be searching for? 
• What might they find useful, interesting or entertaining? 
• What causes might they follow? 

It also pays to consider how the platform algorithm uses them too. 

Still stuck? Do some research into common hashtags in your field. Note what’s popular or trending, but not so big your post will get lost in the mix. As with anything on social media, consistency is key, so make a list of your main topics and find hashtags that fit those topics. Then use them diligently.

You can also come up with your own. Branded hashtags help your followers find your posts in all the noise that is social media.

When you create your hashtags don’t include spaces, punctuation or symbols as these will break the hyperlink and the hashtag won’t work.  For example, use “#clickertraining”, not “# clicker training!”

Best practices for hashtag use

Although most social media platforms support the use of hashtags, how you use them differs from platform to platform. Let’s dig a bit deeper…

Facebook

A user can search for things on Facebook so using a relevant hashtag will help your post show up in search. The jury is still out on whether they’re useful when it comes to having the algorithm show your stuff to new users but they’re not going to be detrimental.

Optimum number of hashtags per post is 2-3. The American Marketing Association suggests that posts with more than three hashtags get reduced engagement so don’t overdo them here.

However, hashtags really come into their own if you have a group. You can use them to link posts about a given topic, find homework and accountability posts, or make specific information easy to find.

Instagram

Hashtags are much bigger deal on Instagram. Here they’re often used to show support or inclusion within a group — so hashtags are more than just a way of categorizing your posts.

On Instagram, they’re used to build communities: users can follow hashtags rather than just search for them.  When a user follows a hashtag, posts containing that tag are shown in their feed automatically. 

According to Instagram, use hashtags in the caption, not the comments if you want it to be found in Search. However, if you prefer a cleaner look, you can include hashtags not intended for search in the comments. Just be aware that if your post is scheduled you can’t add hashtags to comments until the post is live.

You can include up to 30 hashtags on a post, but it’s generally recommended that “less is more” to avoid your posts looking spammy and cluttered. 

Note that using hashtags on Instagram Stories won’t be included on hashtag pages or be shown to viewers who follow that hashtag. So hashtags won’t get your story in front of new eyeballs but they’re still useful for setting context.

And remember to include relevant hashtags in your Instagram bio so you show up in search and people know where you are located and what you do. 

TikTok

Hashtags are definitely a thing on TikTok! Users can search for them but not follow them. However, many users believe hashtags are used by the algorithm to categorize content. For example, if a user frequently views content with say, the hashtag #positivedogtraining, posts containing that hashtag will appear in their feed.

When using hashtags on TikTok, add them to your caption and use between 3-5. Try to use trending and popular ones as well as creating your own. Following trends is a great way to get your content in front of new people so it’s a good idea to keep an eye on what’s hot and what’s not.

YouTube

If you’re using YouTube, you need to be using hashtags. 

Not only can a user search for these, but the algorithm uses information in the headline, hashtag and channel topic to decide who will see a video. Additionally, when a viewer clicks on a hashtag in a video description, YouTube preferentially shows other videos containing that hashtag in their feed. 

That makes them a powerful way to get your message out there.

Adding them is simple, just include them at the end of your video description. Up to three will appear at the top of your text, next to the date, and all of them will be shown at the very bottom.

Note: “hashtags” and “tags” aren’t the same thing in YouTube!

Content Studio explains it like this: 

“Hashtags serve as a way to categorize and organize your content, making it easier for viewers to discover your videos on a specific topic or theme. 

Meanwhile, tags provide context for your videos and help YouTube’s algorithm understand the content.”

Another key difference is that because tags are added information for the algorithm, they don’t show in the description of the video — so your viewer won’t know what they are.

If you want to include tags, add them in the tag field available when you click “show more”.

#Thatsawrap on Hashtags

Now you have a good idea of where hashtags originated and how they function today, why not spend some time researching some ideas to help your social media marketing really fly? Let us know how things are going in the comments.