Social Media Hashtags 101
Hashtags on social media vary from platform to platform, sector to sector, and even based on the context they’re used in. But that doesn’t mean you need to feel overwhelmed when deciding how to integrate hashtags into your social media content strategy.
Below we’ll cover a few key aspects to keep in mind when using hashtags, and touch on best practices for using hashtags for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Tiktok.
Keep reading as we cover the following:
- What are hashtags and how do they work for content discoverability
- How each platform handles hashtags
- Do’s and don’t’s of hashtags
- How to choose the right hashtags for your content
How Hashtags Get Your Content Discovered
We’re all inundated with content on social media. From sponsored and recommended posts, the accounts we chose to follow, to posts our friends send us, there’s a ton out there to sift through.
Thankfully, social media platforms include search capabilities. While more recently those search tools are pivoting to include a newer type of content search called semantic search, most on-platform search tools still rely heavily on hashtags.
Hashtags work by categorizing your content. A hashtag is a note you put on your post to let the on-platform search tool know “hey, this post is about [content type or subject].” That way, when another person on the platform searches for “mermaid makeup” your post that used the hashtags #mermaid and #makeup or #MermaidMakeup pops up in the results.
While you can use posts without hashtags thanks to increasing use of semantic search, where search results are based not just on hashtags, but on the full caption content of a post, discoverability of your post and content in search results is still largely based on hashtag use. There are lots of other ways to increase your content’s discoverability, from re-shares by followers, influencer promotion, to omni-channel marketing strategies. But hashtags remain a central and easy to implement strategy on-platform.
However, it’s important to know that not every platform uses hashtags in the exact same way. For some platforms, like Facebook, hashtags aren’t used as robustly as spaces like Tiktok or Instagram. For others, like Instagram and LinkedIn, hashtags are a factor in how each platform’s algorithm understands and promotes your content. Let’s take a deeper look at the ideal use of hashtags per major platforms.
Social Media Platforms and Hashtags in 2023
There are three things to keep in mind when deciding how and where to use hashtags in the captions for your social media content: what is the platform’s ideal character limit, how many hashtags does that platform’s algorithm seem to prefer, is this hashtag relevant to this platform’s audience.
Ideal character limits for your captions/posts vary across each platform. For Facebook it’s around 80 characters max (super low), Twitter maxes out around 100 characters, LinkedIn is 25 words (different than characters), and Instagram prefers 130-150 characters. For a deep dive into the reasoning, this post from Hootsuite is a good resource.
Ultimately, the trend is that every platform prefers the text/caption aspect of a post to be fairly short. Hashtags included, since they count towards your overall character count.
Likewise, each platform has its own algorithmic preferences for how many hashtags are on a post, and where they appear.
- Twitter prefers 1-2, and likes hashtags integrated into the post itself.
- Instagram and Tiktok are mid-range, with 3-5 hashtags being ideal, and most hashtags are included after the text portion of the caption.
- LinkedIn and Pinterest have the widest range, preferring anywhere from 1-5 for LinkedIn and 2-5 for Pinterest.
- Facebook, like Twitter, seems to prefer hashtags integrated into content, with 2-3 hashtags being ideal.
The ideal character limit and preferred number of hashtags form a sort of foundation for your caption writing. That foundation can help you zero in on the most important part of the content you want to speak about, which hashtags are worth the character space they’ll use, and can help prioritize which hashtags out of literal thousands fit that content and the intended audience best.
Which brings us to the third thing to always keep in mind: is the hashtag you’re using one that fits that platform and its audience? For instance, a hashtag that works really well on Tiktok which has a predominantly younger audience here in the U.S. probably won’t fit as well for a post on LinkedIn or even Facebook whose audiences are older.
Selecting hashtags works best when you know your audience, and understand the demographics of your followers per each platform. But tools for finding trending hashtags for a given platform can be helpful as well to understand trends, current habits, and general hashtag use. Once you’ve got a handle on the basics of hashtag use for the platfoms you post on, there are a couple things to keep in mind to optimize hashtag use.
Do’s and Don’t’s of Hashtags
Even if you’ve selected your hashtags with the utmost intention and care, common misues will render them useless.
Hashtags only work as a complete unit. That means no special characters (commas, periods, dashes) and no spaces beween words in a hashtag, although numerals are fine. Which brings us to the second issue.
Hashtags that contain multiple words can be hard to read. To address that try using camel case: #ThisIsCamelCase. It’s an easy way to make your hashtags more legible, and also to facilitate the ability of screenreaders and other adaptability tech to read them.
But don’t make your hashtags too long! Not only are super long hashtags often a waste of valuable ideal character counts, but they’re harder to remember, leave more room for searcher error, and can be ungainly to read. A hashtag that’s longer than 4-5 words isn’t useful.
Not all hashtags are created equal. Apart from super long, misspelled, or platform mismatched hashtags, there’s one more instance where you’ll need to tread carefully: popular hashtags. While it can seem attractive to use the most popular (and therefore most searched) hashtags on your content, that can backfire.
Popular hashtags = tons of content, which means yours can get lost. While the search results ranking and order for a given hashtag varies, generally there are two central factors: popularity of the post and recency. In short, if you’re only using super popular hashtags, unless your account and content can compete with big corporate, celebrity, and influencer accounts, you’re unlikely to be able to get high enough in the search results to even be seen.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t strategically use popular hashtags. Let’s look at some tips on how to select the right hashtags for your content.
Choosing Hashtags for Your Social Media Content
For companies and nonprofits that are focused on regional and local stakeholders, social media functions as a different part of your marketing strategy than for national or global companies. Your social media is likely far more organic and community focused.
With that in mind, there are three key categories to focus on when selecting and creating hahstags for your social content strategy:
- Branded hashtags
- Localized hashtags
- Common/popular hashtags
Branded hashtags consist of your company/organization’s name, any acronyms of that name, taglines, and specifically created hashtags for any events, products, locations, etc. For instance, for Else Communications I use both #ElseCommunications and #ElseComms as my brand name hashtags. These hashtags can be general use (brand names, taglines) or specific use (events, products, locations). The main rule is that they need to be unique to your brand, and not commonly used by another competitor or unaffiliated account.
Localized hashtags are just what they sound like. Most communities across the U.S. have at least a hashtag or two associated with that area. For instance, #PDX for Portland or #ChiTown for Chicago. Even smaller communities have some sort of associated hashtag, even if it’s just the town’s name. Using a localized hashtag on a post that also uses a popular hashtag can be one way of orienting your content to the right audience, and making it obvious on the post that your business or nonprofit is local.
Common and popular hashtags are trickier. As we discussed above, super popular hashtags can be useless, with your content getting lost in the mix of tens of thousands of other posts. The degree of popularity varies, and if you have a good and consistent posting schedule to help keep your content recent, popular hashtags can still be useful for content categorization. They won’t ever be a magic wand, but if your community/audience is keyed into using a specific popular hashtag, or your content is highly relevant to the topic that hashtag represents, there’s no harm in using it every so often.
Partner with #ElseComms for Social Media Strategy
Social media marketing and outreach can feel overwhelming. Especially for the small business owner or nonprofit that already has a hundred other things to focus on each day. That’s why Else Communications exists: to partner with you to identify a workable and goals driven strategy, help create and manage your social media presence, and serve as a resource so that you can focus on your business rather than Facebook’s latest algorithm change.
Reach out today for a complimentary consultation, and to find out how Else Communications can support your organization.
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