Strategies for Using Hashtags

Using hashtags are a great way to encourage engagement with your audience and growth. However, for each social media platform, there is strategy required in order to get the most value out of hashtags. Check out how I use hashtags for these four social media platforms.

Twitter
ABSOLUTELY use hashtags on Twitter! Hashtags are an easy way for people to find your content when searching. They’re also incredibly helpful when participating in a tweet chat – they encourage engagement and allow multiple people to join in on one discussion. Make sure the hashtags that you use are the most relevant points of your tweet, but only use one or two because using more than two can drop engagement by 17%. Here are some more stats involving hashtags on Twitter:

– Tweets with 1-2 hashtags have 21% more engagement
– Users are 55% more likely to retweet when there is at least 1 hashtag included
– 40% of tweets with hashtags get retweeted

Facebook
You can use hashtags on Facebook, but use them in moderation. There are some studies that have shown that a page loses reach when using hashtags, which may be true because of Facebook’s algorithm, but you may want to consider testing it for yourself to see how your audience reacts to it. Use hashtags that are specific to your industry, and if you’re using popular hashtags, they can increase your visibility and reach. Here’s a breakdown of the average interactions of posts with hashtags that shows that using less is more:

– 1-2 Hashtags — 593 average interactions per post
– 3-5 Hashtags — 416 average interactions per post
– 6-10 Hashtags — 307 average interactions per post
– 10+ Hashtags — 188 average interactions per post

Instagram
I think it’s obvious that you should definitely be using hashtags on Instagram. Hashtags on Instagram are an excellent way to target new audiences and encourage them to follow and engage with your account. Although people often want to use the hashtags that have tens of millions of posts, which may bring you a good amount of likes in the short-run, it’s not very beneficial for the long-run; you want to find hashtags that have an engaging community behind them and are specific to your audience. Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags per post, and you should consider adding your hashtags in a separate comment and include periods and line breaks before adding your hashtags so that the comment is “minimized” and doesn’t look cluttered. Quicksprout shares the amount of interaction that Instagram posts with a certain amount of hashtags get, showing that using 11 hashtags is the most effective:

– 0 Hashtags — 18% interaction per 1k followers
– 1 Hashtag — 29% interaction per 1k followers
– 2 Hashtags — 41% interaction per 1k followers
– 3 Hashtags — 39% interaction per 1k followers
– 4 Hashtags — 31% interaction per 1k followers
– 5 Hashtags — 43% interaction per 1k followers
– 6 Hashtags — 33% interaction per 1k followers
– 7 Hashtags — 30% interaction per 1k followers
– 8 Hashtags — 39.5% interaction per 1k followers
– 9 Hashtags — 49.5% interaction per 1k followers
– 10 Hashtags — 22% interaction per 1k followers
– 11 Hashtags — 79.5% interaction per 1k followers

Pinterest
In my opinion, it’s best to not use hashtags on Pinterest. Hashtags in account descriptions, board titles, board descriptions or profile names aren’t clickable; you can only click and search hashtags in a pin’s description. Pinterest also has a huge unpredictability when it comes to searching hashtags; when searching, you may come across irrelevant entries, which will lead people away from your content instead of giving you more visibility and engagement. You get more relevant results when searching “social media” without the hashtag than “#socialmedia” with the hashtag. However, you can use hashtags for Pinterest contests as long as the hashtag has nothing in common with frequently searched terms; using unique hashtags will lead pinners back to your content.

If you have been slacking on using hashtags, rethink your marketing strategy and your content calendar to see how you can add them in to help you. How do you use hashtags on social media?