How to select the most effective hashtags for your social media?
Hashtags: These little devils have impacted the social media marketing world like nothing else. What began as a humble way on Twitter to converse and exchange ideas has changed into a marketing tool for the novice. Before we start to understand how we can find the best hashtags for our social media, let’s take some time to understand what a hashtag is and how it works?
A hashtag, “#,” is a simple form of labelling and searching social media posts and updates. For example, people can label something trending like #NoShaveNovember, or specify an effective campaign like #BeatPlasticPollution. Twitter was the first social media platform to introduce hashtags, but their popularity soon grew, and other social media started to use them as well.
During their rise to popularity, people started overloading their posts with hashtags to reach a wider audience. But it only led to audience fatigue, and soon engagements dropped. Thus, hashtags usage returned to its former self with limited numbers giving better results than excessive usage. So instead, Twitter suggests users use one or two hashtags relevant to the posts.
Today, hashtags are working exactly as designed to: as an organisational tool. Hashtags do not impact a social media campaign, but they help brands find trending topics and join the conversation online. They also allow brands to create unique posts and reach a wider audience.
So, how do you find the best hashtags for your social media?
To start with, you can find several tools online that help you find the best hashtags. Here are the three best tools that you can use.
It is a generic and straightforward tool that started in 2007 and offered some essential tracking functions for free. But additional features like hashtag storage and monitoring are paid, and you need to upgrade.
WhatTheTrend offers useful Twitter information and statistics. Hootsuite owns WhatTheTrend, and that’s why you get to track hashtags as streams inside Hootsuite. You can check global, national, and even city-specific trends and check their daily or monthly performance. While you can access the basic service free of cost, you need to pay for advanced services.
Trendsmap is a simple tool to search for hashtags by city, country or continent on their world map. For those looking for hashtags in their local area, Trendsmap is a valuable tool.
Knowing how to use your hashtags is not enough; you must ensure that the hashtags you are using are relevant to your post. Some experts advise you to base your hashtags on popular keywords, and you can use Google Keyword Planner to research. One important thing to make sure is that your hashtag doesn’t lead your post to online embarrassment.
Different people use hashtags creatively at other times of the day. You can use Twazzup to see how people do this. All you have to do is sign in with your Twitter account and enter the hashtag. Once you press enter, the tool will show you the latest results and how influencers use them.
The data lets you acknowledge the kind of competition you will find for your tweet with a particular hashtag. The tool will also show you how many times people used that hashtag in an hour.
Even though you might feel tempted to use all the appropriate hashtags for your posts, there is a limit to how many you should use. The number depends and varies according to the social media you are posting in.
Let’s take a look.
When you use hashtags on your Facebook, they help your content reach more people, get new members for your brands, and increase overall visibility. How to do so? One great way to use hashtags on Facebook is to be precise and pick 1-2 hashtags that genuinely resonates with your content. Sometimes, Facebook users inspect some hashtag feed instead of their regular newsfeed; that’s when they are looking to engage with new and trending topics. This is the moment when your brand can shine the most.
According to Twitter, you should not use more than two hashtags for your tweets. This is because simply using two hashtags can double your engagement. On the other hand, it can quickly decrease your engagement levels if you use more than two hashtags.
Instagram – Close to 30 hashtags
Instagram is a great place to use hashtags for your posts. But, experts suggest, if you want to maximise your post’s engagement, you should use nearly 30 hashtags. In addition, there are specific online tools that show your outgoing hashtag utilisation during the reporting phase. That includes a list of hashtags that gave you the best results, a.k.a most engagement.
Although back in 2018, Pinterest announced that they would introduce hashtag capabilities on their platform, there is still little to no data to show how hashtags perform here. So, all you have to do is insert keywords in your description instead of using hashtags.
Like Pinterest, LinkedIn also recently added hashtags to their platform, but they created the search method directed at hashtags, unlike Pinterest. So, you can use at least three hashtags in your LinkedIn posts to reach more people.
There you go, folks! These are some ways you can select the most effective hashtags for your social media accounts. Hashtags are highly effective tools to reach more people and show that you care for specific social causes like #savetheenvironment. All you have to do is keep them relevant to your post content.
February 26, 2023 
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August 12, 2021 
