How to Use Hashtags on Popular Social Networks
By Debbie Gregory.
Our last two articles went over what a hashtag is, why you need to use them when posting on social media, as well as how to find the best hashtags to use for your posts. In this article, we will go over tips on how to use those hashtags on each of the popular social platforms.
We will begin with Twitter because this platform was the first to utilize hashtags. Hashtags on Twitter are best sprinkled into the post itself to emphasize or highlight important parts of your Tweet.
Keep in mind:
- Utilize relevant hashtags
- Twitter recommends no more than 2 hashtags per post
- More is not better, too many hashtags looks spammy
You want to put hashtags after your photo caption, in your stories, in your profile as well as in the comments section when you are engaging your followers.
Keep in mind:
- Instagram recommends no more than 10 hashtags per post (the largest number of all the social media platforms)
- Instead of posting your hashtags with your images caption, consider adding them as the first comment on the post so that your followers can focus on your caption without being distracted or put off
You want to add hashtags when writing a pin description or a description for a pin you are re-pinning.
Keep in mind:
- Pinterest recommends no more than 5 hashtags per post
- Pinterest is more like a search engine than a social platform so make sure that your hashtags are searchable, specific, and contain relevant keywords
You can include hashtags in any part of your written post or in the comments.
Keep in mind:
- Facebook recommends no more than 2 hashtags per post
- You can search for a hashtag using Facebook’s search bar
- You can click on any hashtag to see the posts using that same hashtag
YOUTUBE
You want to add relevant hashtags to your video title or video description.
Keep in mind:
- YOUTUBE recommends no more than 3 hashtags per post
- Adding too many hashtags to your video can get your content flagged as spam
- Hashtags are made into clickable links in titles and descriptions on YOUTUBE so followers can find other content with the same hashtags
- If you don’t include hashtags in the title of your video, the first three hashtags in the description will show above your videos title
You want to add hashtags in your LinkedIn updates and any articles you post to the platform.
Keep in mind:
- LinkedIn recommends no more than 2 hashtags per post
- LinkedIn is more of a professional platform than other popular social media sites You need to be sure that you keep your use of hashtags professional too
- You can follow hashtags on LinkedIn to see recent posts that include hashtags
- Hashtags can be searched using the platform’s search bar
- Trending hashtags will show in the “news and views” section on your home page
Regardless of which social platforms you use, make sure that the hashtags you add to your posts are timely, relevant, specific to your business, and make sure you don’t use too many of them.
We hope these articles on Hashtags have been helpful to our VAMBOA members.
