Use Hashtags to Boost your visibility on Social Media

Use hashtags.

Use hashtags on social media to help put you in front of different audiences. Users use hashtags to find new and related content. Therefore, it is important that the hashtags that you use are relevant and appropriate for your content. This way your content is likely to be matched to someone looking for your content (and you won’t irritate people by coming up in non-relevant contexts).

Hashtags can be used to search for content and to appear in other people’s searches – simply put the use of hashtags can boost your visibility by helping people to find you.

Popular hashtags (such as weekly hashtags) and in the moment “trending” hashtags can help you engage and join in the conversation as well.

Create a Hashtag Strategy

Because they have the ability to boost your visibility, it is important to have a hashtag strategy and to use your hashtags in a way that they will get you in front of your target audience or customer.

Research and Create a List of Hashtags to Use

You should make your hashtags specific to the audience you’re trying to attract. That way, the more targeted the audience, the more engaged they will be, and the better your content will be received.

Create your own Hashtag

You might also wish to create your own hashtag. A branded hashtag or product hashtag. Alternatively, it might be more appropriate for you to have an event hashtag (such as a conference hashtag) or a campaign hashtag.

Plan out your Hashtag use for each Social Media Platform

On Twitter, hashtags are used to find conversations or to start one of your own. If your profile is public, people can use hashtags to search for and find tweets. Tweets with one hashtag generate the most engagement. On Twitter, the general rule is use 1 or 2 hashtags.

On Instagram, the use of multiple hashtags is encouraged (Instagram allows you to use up to 30). On Instagram users can follow different hashtags and use hashtags to search for and find photographs using the same hashtag. Instagram will show both recent and popular photographs with the hashtag when searching.

On Facebook the use of hashtags are more limited. As most users keep their profiles private, hashtags are of limited use. However, if you are posting as a brand or business on pages or groups, hashtags can be useful for boosting your visibility.

Finally, LinkedIn. LinkedIn has only started using hashtags more recently. A few relevant hashtags can be used in your content such as articles and status updates as well as company pages.

Need help setting your social media campaign goals and planning your social media content? Why not grab a copy of our Social Media Planner.

The Social Media Planner contains a section dedicated to planning out your Hashtag Strategy and the main planner can be used to plan out which hashtags you are using when.