How to use Hashtags properly in Social Media platforms?

The use of social media has continued to be an important factor when it comes to improving your business and gaining traction for newcomers to look into your product or service. If you are not aware of it yet, the biggest social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. There are a couple of new platforms such as Tiktok that are coming to light. However, whichever social media platforms your brand uses as part of the social media strategy, being able to identify the specific hashtags will help you boost your social media reach and engagement.

When it comes to promoting your business on social media platforms, hashtags, known as the pound sign (#), are a great way to gain views, likes, and shares. This is also one of the ways to make your content discoverable to the public. 

Looking back, hashtags were most used on Twitter but then later became a common factor for all social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. Mastering the use of hashtags takes no cost and all it takes is research on specific keywords that relates to your business. 

Before learning how to use hashtags, it’s important to understand the basic concept of hashtags. So, what are hashtags? Hashtags is basically a word or keyword written after the hash symbol (#) that helps the audience who may be interested in your topic to find and locate by simply searching a keyword or a particular hashtag. This will help draw attention to your posts and encourage interaction among the audience. 

Applying a hashtag on your social media posts sounds simple and easy, and for many reasons, it’s simple. However, using hashtags will only make a difference to your social media strategy if done the right way. Here are some tips that you should follow:

• Try not to get carried away with the number of hashtags you’re using. In most cases, you’ll find social media posts with multiple hashtags with every keyword possible, sometimes where it does not even relate to the brand or business. However, using only one or three hashtags with the right keywords could have a strong impact than a lot of them.
• Try to keep your hashtags short and memorable. This relates to the first point where you want it to be short and in quality. 
• Use hashtags that are detailed, specific, and catered to your brand. Using broad hashtags will have your content most likely lost in a pile of content. For example, using #fyp or #foryourpage on Tiktok will get your content lost because every user applies this hashtag and Tiktok currently has around 1 billion users. This just shows that if you create one post and apply the hashtags #fyp or #foryourpage which are commonly used, then no one will be able to see your content
• Utilizing trending hashtags can get your content to the front page or known by the audience. Often you’ll hear people talking about what the trending topics are for the day, whether it would be Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Christmas, etc. When you see a hashtag relating to your brand, it’s best to take action and use it immediately to increase your brand’s visibility. If the post you’re creating provides genuine information, your audience will re-share it, thus increasing your overall brand awareness. 

One of the tips mentioned above was to not overuse hashtags and this becomes vital and an essential part of your social media strategy. Again, hashtags give your brand more exposure so you can spread the word about your product to a massive audience. If you use hashtags on multiple channels, people will tend to remember your hashtag easily. 

However, there is importance as well to the number of hashtags you’re using on several platforms as each platform acts and performs differently. Each social media platform has its own hashtag frequency and crossing it can lead to lesser engagement. It has been proven by the Social Baker study that using 10+ hashtags reduces engagement by 68.2%. Here are some examples of how many hashtags to use on each platform:

• Facebook: it is best to use one popular and general hashtag while adding in a custom hashtag that relates to your business’s product or service
• Instagram: A limit of 30 is only allowed on Instagram. However, you would want to limit no more than 9 per post for maximum engagement
• Twitter: With the character restrictions that Twitter has, avoid using more than 2 hashtags per tweet for the best engagement
• LinkedIn: This is one of the many platforms that have no limits on the usage of hashtags. Though it is recommended to have a maximum of 5 as the algorithm of the platform can make your post spam is you are using multiple hashtags
• TikTok: With this new platform, you’ll find many posts going for around 4-5 hashtags to boost your reach
• Pinterest: It is recommended to use around 2-3 hashtags on Tiktok to boost your reach on the platform itself

In conclusion, using hashtags is essential for business growth but being able to maximize the usage of hashtags can bring you the best results for reach and engagement. With the following tips, you can be able to improve your social media strategy and receive a strong revenue stream. 

 

Pimclick is a digital marketing agency that has been around for 15+ years plus and specializes in social media marketing, especially with platforms like Facebook and Instagram. With these 2 platforms, we can provide your social media strategy, retargeting strategy, and advertising campaign strategy. If you would like to hear more about our services, you can contact us.