What is a Hashtag and How Do I Use Them?
Posted on July 01, 2020
By Theresa Chiechi, Designer, Illustrator, Writer
The word “hashtag” in reference to social media has become a part of the popular lexicon for over a decade now, but some may still be confused as to what they are and how to use them. So what’s the deal with hashtags?
What is a “Hashtag?”
Represented by the “#” symbol, a character some might remember referring to as the “pound sign”, it’s best to think of hashtags as a labeling system.
There is an enormous amount of information out there on the web–images, videos, blogs, etc.–how does one possibly sift through all the information and come upon a specific search? With the use of hashtags!
A hashtag is a keyword or phrase written within a post or comment, preceded by the “#” sign, to help facilitate a search for it. So for example you go out to brunch and take an aesthetically pleasing photo of your eggs benedict and want to post the photo on social media. If you post the photo along with a caption that contains #brunch or #eggs, if someone else types in those words into the search bar, your picture will come up.
By labeling your content with relevant and appropriate hashtags, you are helping others discover it.
Hashtags can be #cleverly woven into your #caption or simply tacked on at the end. #biztips #How2Hashtag
Use hashtags to grow your social media following
Hashtags are crucial in building your following on social media and amplifying your posts to those outside of your network.
Let’s say you have 50 followers on Instagram and you’ve posted that eggs benedict pic sans the use of hashtags. The photo will show in your 50 followers’ newsfeed but because you didn’t properly “categorize” it, Instagram doesn’t know where best to store the photo for others to discover. By adding a hashtag or two, you create triggers for Instagram to know when to boost your photo.
Someone outside of your following types in the word “brunch” in the Instagram search bar. If you’ve used that hashtag in your photo caption, your photo will pop up. That person sees your post and is delighted by your picture. They wish to see more riveting breakfast-lunch related content and decide to follow you. Congrats, you now have grown your base.
Which hashtag should I use?
There are two things you should keep in mind when choosing a hashtag; relevancy and popularity.
You obviously want your hashtag to relate to the content it’s accompanying. You post a picture of your eggs benedict but use the hashtag “dog”, that’s just false advertising. Someone who types in “dog” but gets served up your brunch pic will not engage with that post because that’s just not what the signed up for.
Next, you want to choose a hashtag that a lot of people are searching for, but not for something that everyone and their grandma are using. If everyone under the sun labels their food pic with “brunch” then your post is going to get lost amongst the millions of other posters that had your same brilliant idea. It’s not that you need to avoid these sorts of hashtags all together, but if you are limited in how many hashtags you can use, you might want to be more selective and careful.
If you’re at a complete loss for words, look to some of your favorite influencers for inspiration. See what hashtags they’re using. Note which hashtags they used for some of their most popular posts and also which hashtags they get repeat usage out of.
Tools to find the right hashtag
There are various resources online that will help you find hashtags and how often those words are being used/search. They will also list related words to try out. If you have some room in your social media marketing budget, check out these tools:
How many should I use?
Great question! This will depend on what platform you’re posting content to. You may think the more the merrier, but certain platforms penalize posts littered with too many hashtags. Let’s look at our options:
Your posts are limited to 280 characters, so you need to think carefully about your hashtag use on this platform. One or two per tweet should do the trick.
Twitter also has a feature that shows which hashtags are trending at the moment. Use this to see what topics are most relevant and which hashtag train might be most beneficial to jump on.
For a while, hashtags were completely irrelevant on this platform. In 2015, Facebook introduced the use of hashtags but there is still a lot of debate as to how handy it is to use them.
It doesn’t hurt to use a couple, so stick with one or two. Too many hashtags will make your post look like spam and unprofessional.
Like Facebook, this is another platform that is not often associated with the usage of hashtags. Since networking is key on this platform, the use of hashtags here can get your updates and articles in front of people outside of your network. It’s recommended to use one to three hashtags.
Instagram is the one social media outlet where you can go to town with hashtags. Instagram cuts you off at 30 hashtags, but you’ll probably get enough mileage if you stick to around 10. Most people keep their hashtags at the end of the post, usually separated from the caption by dashes or asterisks.
When typing in your hashtag, Instagram will actually show how many posts have been tagged by that word. This is a very handy feature to help you decided which words are worth using.
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