Before we scare you off talking about hashtags (and in case you don’t know—it’s okay, we won’t tell!), a hashtag is simply this symbol: #. We’ve come across lots of people who weren’t really sure what a hashtag was, and had mistakenly thought it was something else, but any time you see #dealwithit or # with any word after it, that’s a hashtag.
A hashtag is used for connecting social media posts to common topics, or to one another. They’re very popular on Twitter and Instagram where the conversations are shorter and happen much faster. So for instance, if you’re at the Los Angeles Marathon in February and want to see pictures or tweets from other people who are there, you might tag your posts #lamarathon and you might click the link to search that hashtag within the app or website that you’re using. Or when a news event is happening and people want to find out what’s happening at that moment, they might search #Paris, for instance. That’s all a hashtag is. So don’t be scare—it’s that easy!
The reason that you want to use hashtags on your social media pages is because it can help your content appear in searches for those topics. It’s a little obnoxious when people go hashtag-crazy, so stick to just one or a couple at a time, but don’t be afraid to throw some in there. Not sure where to start? We can help! First, let’s talk about hashtags on Facebook, a site that not everyone knows supports hashtags!
5 Tips for Using Hashtags on Facebook
Be creative (AKA have fun!). If it’s Monday and someone brought donuts to the office, you might post about it with a silly hashtag like, “Dr. Bob is trying to raise our spirits with donuts. #caseofthemondays.” It’s not anything serious and it doesn’t have much to do with bringing in additional traffic, but it’s a fun way to convey that you have personality and that your office is filled with real people.
Be connected. Hashtags work really well when you’re connected to an event or holiday, or any other trend. On Twitter and Instagram it’s easy to see what hashtags are “trending” because they have places where top hashtags are listed for users, but that is
Chronicle your posts. When we were doing our holiday photo posts and knew there would be two weeks worth of posts, we did a hashtag to tie them all together: #12daysofchristmas. That’s the kind of hashtag that other people might be using as well, so it’s possible if someone clicked it or searched it, they would see our photos along with the posts of other accounts using this tag. That probably won’t bring us any additional web traffic, but it does signal to Facebook that we’re using the tools they have set up for us, and that may help boost our reach a bit. For our Facebook fans, it simply brands our posts as part of a series and adds to the social media experience.
Brand your posts. Anyone can make up a hashtag. It doesn’t have to be something already created, but if you do a random hashtag like #thecheesefliesatmidnight then your post will probably be the only thing with that tag. That might be okay, depending on what your goal is. If you’d like to brand your posts with a company hashtag, go for it! It would be helpful to do something like this if you’re participating in an event and have several staff posting their photos with the hashtag, for example. But you could simply tag all of your posts with #Innexus (but not our name—your name!) and give your followers the opportunity to click the hashtag and see other things you’ve posted without being on your Facebook page.
Use sparingly, but consistently. You don’t have to use a hashtag on every single post, but if you are branding your posts with hashtags, then keep it up and see how that works. Don’t go nuts with 20 hashtags on every post. It gets overwhelming for users to see that in their feeds.
Give it a try! If you’d like suggestions or have further questions, get in touch with our Innexus specialists!
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