How hashtags work on social media

Hashtags are used just about everywhere. They make regular appearances in a social media posts. They travel across platforms and they can even carry the message of an entire marketing campaign for really savvy brands. But how do hashtags work on different social media platforms and how does this affect the way that we use them for business. These are some really interesting questions that I will try to answer inside this post.

Twitter

Hey it's your friend and today I want to talk about hashtags. Specifically the different ways that hashtags are used across various social media platforms, like Twitter Instagram and Facebook. So let's start with hashtags on Twitter. Twitter is essentially the birth place of hashtags and it all started with this sweet how do you feel about using the # for groups as in hashtag barcamp. 

This was the first time that a hashtag was used on Twitter and the message. How Twitter hashtags are still being used today to group together individual tweets that talk about a common topic. Basically hashtags on Twitter let us find conversations about that we are interested in. We can join in and voice our opinions or share an experience. Brand can really easily use Twitter hashtags to engage in conversations around a certain topic or create a new hashtag to promote an event, like hashtag social media marketing world 2019. 

If you use a pre existing hashtag just make sure you take 5 minutes to see what it's about so you don't find yourself in hot water like the journal pizza did when they turn the why I stayed hashtag featuring stories from domestic abuse survivors into a joke about thing for pizza.

Instagram

Now what about hashtags on Instagram. Instagram is all about images and each hashtag contains a visual feed of all the posts that share the same tag, whether it's displayed in the image caption or down below in the comments section. People tend to go a little crazy with Instagram hashtags which is what prompted instead to put a limit of 30 hashtags on each post. 

What is the use of hashtags on the platform it tells us is that they play a key role on insta. Actually Instagram is almost powered by hashtags, making their role in business kind of multi purpose here but no matter what you're doing whether you are holding a contest or giveaway or working on a digital campaign, you want to maximize the social media reach for your post and make sure that as many people as possible see it. 

The best way to do that is by using trending hashtags. Since these are the hashtags that people are actively using it guarantees that the IG post we spend so much time creating won't go unnoticed.

Facebook

How about hashtags on Facebook. Facebook hashtags work in a different way than they do on Instagram and Twitter. This is because Facebook itself is much more focused on people including those with private profiles. Most people they don't really use hashtags Facebook unless it's to express some kind of emotion like "I've been trying to open this jar for the past 20 minutes no luck #frustrated". They don't really search for hashtags there either Facebook is where you go to look for people or friends and sometimes groups or bands that you like. But that doesn't mean that hashtags don't have a place on Facebook. On the contrary this means that hashtags on Facebook have a much more specific use, especially in business. A lot of brands they actually for go using any Facebook hashtag since as we mentioned people don't really use them to discover content or join in on conversations, but all this changes when brands want to connect a series of Facebook posts. In this case Facebook hashtags becomes super helpful. Brand Ipsy is a really good example of this. 

They created a series of short videos on Facebook where they tested different products that could be found in their beauty subscription service. Even though each video featured a different product that could range from foot peels to eyeliner tape they were all connected by the #crashtestbeauties. Anybody who watched one of the videos could just click on the hashtag and be taken to what is essentially a play list of all the videos in that series helping viewers discover even more Facebook content from Ipsy.

I imagine that this would also work really well for fitness brands just invent your own hashtag like "get fit with Arnold" or something a lot more clever and create content that shows people the best exercises for different muscle groups and the connected all with your own hashtag, the workouts for total body fitness.

This was just a really quick look at how hashtags work on different platforms, whether it is to engage in conversation on Twitter, discover new content on Instagram, or create a series of posts on Facebook, of course there are also used on other social media platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, and Reddit and more. 

I'll be in different capacities but the number one tip that I have for you guys today is that if you use hashtags for business on any platform remember to track them. See how many times you're used, where they're used, when they're used, and who is using them. 

If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comment section or just let me know what else you want to learn about and if you found this post helpful and remember to share.