This is the hashtag world where even birthday wishes are sent with hashtags. Whether we’re using social media to express our opinions on social issues (for example, #Metoo) or uploading a photo of our favourite cuisines (#foodgram), hashtags are essentially useful since they help categorize material. In certain ways, it aids in the filtering of unnecessary facts from the subject you wish to focus on. Hashtags connect you to everyone else who has used that certain hashtag, allowing you to participate in a global discourse about your area of expertise. It’s how you get people to come to you and raise your brand so that it’s heard beyond your circle.
Knowing how to use hashtags will assist your brand’s social media reach and engagement.
This blog will explain how you can utilize hashtags efficiently on social media and why you should do so.
What is a Hashtag?
A hashtag is a pound symbol or character that is followed by a specific word or phrase. It indicates (to users and algorithms) that a piece of information is related to a given topic or belongs to a particular category on social media. Hashtags make things more discoverable on platform searches and, as a result, reach a larger audience. It enables those who are interested in a certain subject to easily discover content and information related to that subject.
Hashtags are primarily used on social media platforms. They gained a lot of attention on Twitter. However, hashtags can now be used on other social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+.
How to use Hashtags?
Use the ‘#’ Symbol
To make one, begin with the hashtag symbol # and then follow it with letters and, in certain cases, numbers. The symbol ‘#’ is also known as a number sign or pound in some parts of the world. In definition, a hashtag is a label made up of a word or phrase tag preceded by a hash symbol.
No spaces
A hashtag can be a single word, an abbreviation, a made-up letter-number combination, or a phrase. There can’t be any spaces between words even if it’s a sentence. Except for the # sign at the start, your hashtag cannot contain punctuation or symbols.
Hashtags should be easy to remember
Keep hashtags of easy and short words. This is especially crucial on Twitter, where you only have a limitation of used characters. It’s preferable if a hashtag is a simple word, phrase, or abbreviation. Hashtags that are long, difficult to pronounce, or recall will be difficult for people to use.
Learn when to avoid Hashtags
It’s best to avoid overusing hashtags. This is when you use many hashtags in one message. A message with more than two hashtags is difficult to read. Adding a hashtag to an irrelevant message merely to garner attention is considered bad etiquette. Make sure your material is relevant to the hashtag you’re using at all times.
Create new and unique Hashtags
If you think you’ve created a brand-new hashtag, do a quick search on the social platform primarily. Sometimes, we find that the hashtags that we think are new and unique already exist.
Most Popular hashtags of 2021
The most famous hashtags aren’t necessarily the best or the most important ones. These hashtags go viral because of their relevance and relatability to the world.
The most popular hashtags of 2021 are:
#love (2.1B posts)
#instagood (1.3B posts)
#fashion (972M posts)
#photooftheday (931M posts)
#photography (769M posts)
#beautiful (749M posts)
#instagram (691M posts)
#picoftheday (655M posts)
#nature (639M posts)
#happy (639M posts)
How to Find relevant Hashtags?
When it comes to making your post or content go viral online, it’s best to use hashtags that are currently prevailing or are in trend. When it comes to understanding when to use a hashtag and how to make sure it’s relevant, there are several tools and search engines that may help you narrow down your options, let’s have a brief look:
Given that hashtags are still widely used on a website as large as Twitter, several tools have been developed to help users find and utilize the proper and appropriate hashtags more effectively. The tools provided by Twitter include – ‘What the trend tool,’ which helps a user find, top hashtags which have been trending for the past 30 days. Another platform is ‘Twitnomy’, which helps to find personalized hashtags related to the content or post. ‘Hashtagify.me,’ allows you to receive email updates about trending hashtags. All these platforms will help you ensure that your post contains the most popular, relatable, and trending hashtags on Twitter.
When it comes to visual platforms like Instagram, the ‘global feed’ is your best chance. To do so, go to the bottom-left corner of the app and tap on the ‘magnifying glass’ symbol. This will send you to Instagram’s standard newsfeed, which includes a search browser title box at the top. You may next enter keywords related to your post, which will bring up similar images and videos, after which you can look at the hashtags used in each of these posts. A list will be narrowed down for you so that you can select the appropriate hashtags for your posts.
Facebook is the oldest and still the most important platform for using hashtags which will help your posts go popular. The section on the right side of your newsfeed that displays the day’s popular topics works on the same idea as Twitter. To find hashtags that are relevant to your content, enter a few keywords linked to it and choose the most popular ones from the results.
Conclusion
Hashtags certainly make the searches easier as well as help in increasing the reach of a post or content on any platform – Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Here are some helpful hashtag tips:
- Linkedin is a professional platform, hence keep the use of your hashtags professional too.
- Consider making your hashtags the first comment on your post so that people can focus on your caption.
- Remember that Twitter recommends using no more than two hashtags.
