A hashtag is used to label your content to make it more searchable and discoverable upon social media sites, but should you use it on all your social media sites?

Hashtags were originally created for Twitter and were used in place of words in your 140 character tweet. However since then they have spread across many other social media sites, Facebook, Instagram, blogging, etc. It is a great way to potentially reach more people with your posts as it creates a tag associated with your post which is like free SEO.

So how do you use it?

First you need to make sure your hashtags are unique, memorable, and relevant. Pair them with pictures – pictures with hashtags increase your views and encourage more engagement.  Don’t cloud your post with hashtags, instead group them together at the end of your post, so your message is easier to read. If you use trending hashtags it can be an easy way to increase your followers and engagement, however don’t get too carried away and overuse hashtags that aren’t relevant to your post. Take the time to explore hashtags so you can be sure you are using the most widely used hashtags that are relevant to your post.

Now which platforms do hashtags make sense?

Twitter? Yes! Absolutely use hashtags on Twitter. This helps categorize your posts and tweets with hashtags get twice the level of engagement then tweets without. Don’t go crazy though, 1 or 2 will do. Tweets with 1 or 2 hashtags show an increased engagement level of 21%, where as tweets with more than 2 hashtags receive 17% lower engagement.

Instagram? Yes! This is where you can go crazy with hashtags. Posts with 11 or more hashtags show the highest engagement and interaction rate.

Facebook? Forget about it. Facebook posts with hashtags actually show a lower performance rate than those without. So skip the # here!

Happy #Hashtagging!