Hashtags are a phenomenon that has taken over the internet and there are thousands of people who are making use of them in ways that really don’t make sense or have any use or purpose. Being able to understand how hashtags work is going to be extremely important if you want to be able to get the kind of results that are going to be useful for your online marketing campaigns.
How does the hashtag work?
Ok, first let’s explain the actual use of the hashtag in a way that is truly easy. The hashtag is basically a way to link a bunch of subjects that relate. Let’s say for example that someone is talking about the last huge sporting event win and how the top player in a team scored the perfect goal. You could create a hashtag called #theperfectgoal with your post.
Then, everyone who sees this hashtag can also create their own post and use the same hashtag to link it with your post. This means that when a person searches for this particular hashtag, they will be able to get a list of all the posts that have used the exact same hashtag when they have posted something that is in any way related to the content about the perfect goal.
The problem is that some people are using hashtags for random words that are just too generic and it would be impossible for people to find proper content with them. If you hashtag word like #win, you will get thousands of results from all kinds of subjects that are unrelated, but if you create a unique hashtag that people can remember, then you have a great way to link content together.
The hashtag engagement percentages
There is a very obvious difference between the use of hashtags in posts and not using any hashtags at all. When a hashtag is used in a post, the engagement for that post is likely to be twee as high as a general rule. If there are one or two hashtags on your posts, you will experience a 21% increase in your engagement and this is a huge change, but be careful because using more than two hashtags is going to be counterproductive and it could decrease that engagement to 17%.
The 3 main platforms for hashtag effectiveness
There are 3 hashtags that are going to be the most useful for you to be effective. The first one is Twitter, which is the birthplace of the hashtag and continues to be the best place to use them. The second is Instagram, with just as much value on the hashtags as it offers on Twitter and the third, but certainly not least important is Facebook. The engagement of your posts is going to be increased in all 3 of these platforms when you use popular hashtags that are in any way related to the business.
Conclusion
Always keep this in mind when you are doing any kind of work that involves social media. The hashtag ca mean the difference between having a substantial engagement or very little results from your publications.
Sharon Callix
Award Winning Social Media Expert
Follow me here: https://twitter.com/SC707Tweets
