We all know how effective hashtags are in our social media strategy to help improve your reach and attract a new audience. How to find the right hashtags and how many to use are crucial to make the most of the algorithms and improve post-performance.
Every social platform works slightly differently and when Hootsuite recently shared their suggestions for each platform, we thought you would appreciate a peek at the details.
• Facebook: 1-2 #
• Instagram: 5-10 #
• Twitter: 1-2 #
• LinkedIn: 1-2 #
• Pinterest: 2-5 #
This is great as a guide, but let’s be honest, there is always more to it than this. Here are four key factors you need to know:
Mix it up
Avoid repetition using the same hashtags on every, or even most of your posts. Keep them relevant to your post, especially when you are limited to just 1 or 2, so maybe an awareness day or well-known acronyms like #TBT or #OOTD. Look for a balance between product or service hashtags, more niche ones or community-based ones.
TOP TIP: Make use of tagging in your location on your post instead of using up your hashtags. This works for events too.
It’s a numbers game
When researching your hashtags, look at the numbers. If you want to get discovered, you will be lost on such a popular term on your posts and few people will be following that hashtag. For example, #instagood with over 1Billion uses will not be as effective as a more niche hashtag for posts. You could do some clever swaps such as #ThrowbackThursday 54m to #MondayMemories with 166k.
Take advantage of the similar and related hashtag suggestions that come up too to discover more options.
TOP TIP: Instagram Stories and Reels, however, work well with more popular terms.
Check other terms
Where your hashtag has another meaning, and maybe not something you want to be associated with, then you might find some terms banned. Instagram will show you a message that the term does not meet their community standards. You can still use it however, only Top Posts will show on this hashtag.
If you are creating a fresh campaign hashtag you might want to check who else is using that, or again that it reads easily, without any other meanings or misreadings. Check out these epic fails for an example.
Test
Check your post analytics to see what’s working and what’s not. There is much debate whether to use the comments section to add more hashtags (and also trick the engagement algorithm). There is no clear evidence to advocate this is the way forward and when scheduling posts, this is just another task.
Don’t forget to check out our Hashtag Strategies blog too for more suggestions on getting your overall strategy right.