What is a Hashtag?

Hashtags are a fundamental element of social media. They allow users to categorize content, join conversations, and expand their account reach and have become an integral part of how we communicate and engage online. Discover the world of hashtags in the guide below. Learn about their purpose, and how you can leverage hashtags to grow your brand and connect with your audience on social media platforms.

What Does a Hashtag Mean?

A hashtag is a way to categorize and organize content on social media platforms. It consists of a hash or pound symbol (#) followed by a keyword or phrase. Hashtags help users find and follow topics they are interested in by making it easier to discover related content.

Hashtags help categorize and organize content on social media, making it easier for users to find and follow topics they are interested in. When you include a hashtag in your social media post, it becomes clickable. If someone clicks on the hashtag, they will be taken to a page that shows all other posts that have used the same hashtag. This allows users to easily find and follow conversations or content related to a specific topic.

Why are Hashtags Important?

Hashtags have become an integral part of social media, connecting users across platforms and facilitating discussion. Some of the benefits of using hashtags on social media include: 

• Improve Visibility and Discoverability: Hashtags help make your content more discoverable to users searching for specific topics or keywords. This increases the reach and visibility of your posts.
• Boost Engagement: Using relevant hashtags can increase engagement on your posts by connecting you with users who are interested in your content. This can lead to more likes, comments, shares, and followers.
• Build Community: Hashtags allow users with shared interests to find and connect with each other. This can help build a community around your brand or content.
• Provide Context: Hashtags can add additional context and meaning to your social media posts, helping to clarify your message and intent.  

How to Use Hashtags

Hashtags are a key feature on social media platforms, where they are represented by any word or phrase preceded by the “#” symbol. These can consist of one or multiple words without spaces, forming a single phrase. While hashtags are simple to create, effectively incorporating them into your social media marketing strategy demands a bit more thought and planning.

How to find hashtags for your brand

The first step is to identify the most relevant and effective hashtags for your brand and audience on each platform. 

Here’s how to discover the best hashtags:

1. Analyze your brand’s offerings and break them down into specific, niche words that describe your products or services. Consider what your target audience commonly searches for related to your industry. This will help you identify relevant keywords to use as hashtags.
2. Take a look at the hashtags used by accounts with a similar audience to yours. Identify the most popular and relevant hashtags your competitors are using, as these are likely to be effective for your brand as well. This can give you a good starting point for your own hashtag strategy.
3. Type a hashtagged keyword in the search bar of your preferred platform. This will help you discover content and accounts related to your brand, making it easier to find the right hashtags for your posts.
4. Finally, utilize a tool like Metricool’s hashtag generator to find the most relevant and trending hashtags on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Metricool also lets you see which hashtags you’ve already used on Instagram, the number of posts on your account that contain each one, as well as the number of likes and comments on those posts. This data can be really valuable for optimizing your hashtag strategy over time.

How many hashtags to use by platform

Hashtags are a powerful tool for increasing the visibility and discoverability of your content on social media. However, the optimal number of hashtags to use can vary depending on the platform. It’s important to keep this in mind when crafting your social media posts.

How many hashtags to use on Instagram 

On Instagram, users are allowed to use up to 30 hashtags per post. However, Instagram recommends using only 3-5 hashtags per post. These hashtags are typically placed at the end of the caption, but you can also place them in the first comment if you need to use more than 5.

How many hashtags to use on TikTok

On TikTok, it is also recommended to use 3-5 hashtags per post. It’s important to mix in hashtags related to your brand, niche, and trending hashtags to increase your chances of being discovered by your target audience.

How many hashtags to use on YouTube 

The number of hashtags used on YouTube is important to keep in mind. YouTube will ignore all of your hashtags if you use more than 15 in a single video description. The sweet spot for YouTube is just 1-2 hashtags, which should be added to the video description.

How many hashtags to use on Facebook

You can use as many hashtags as you want on Facebook, but it is actually recommended to use 0 to 3 hashtags per post. Overusing hashtags on Facebook can come across as spammy and too salesy to your audience.

How many hashtags to use on Twitter (X) 

Twitter recommends using clear and concise hashtags, as they are included in the limited character count on the platform. It’s also important to use them consistently to increase awareness and make it easier for users to engage with your content. Using 2 hashtags per post is considered good practice.

How many hashtags to use on Threads

Threads, the new social media platform from Meta, recently introduced “tags” which serve the same function as hashtags on other platforms. However, Threads imposes a hard limit of one tag per post. It’s crucial to choose the best optimized tags for your brand and audience on Threads and use them strategically.

How to Track and Measure Hashtags

Hashtags are a powerful tool for boosting your social media visibility and engagement. But to truly harness their potential, you need to track and measure their performance.

The first step is to select a reliable hashtag analytics tool. Some popular options include Brand24, RiteTag, and Hashtagify. These tools allow you to monitor your hashtag usage, analyze its performance, and gain valuable insights.

Once you’ve set up your tracking tool, it’s time to start monitoring the data. Pay close attention to these key metrics:

• Reach/Impressions: The total number of people who have seen posts using the hashtag.
• Engagement: Likes, comments, shares, and other interactions on posts with the hashtag.
• Sentiment: Whether the conversation around the hashtag is positive, negative, or neutral.
• Top Posts/Influencers: The most popular and influential content and accounts using the hashtag.

The insights you gain from tracking these metrics can be incredibly valuable for improving your overall social media marketing strategy. Here are a few ways to put the data to work:

• Identify top-performing content and replicate it
• Find influential users to partner with for campaigns
• Discover related topics and hashtags to expand your reach
• Monitor brand sentiment and reputation around the hashtag
• Optimize your posting times and frequency for maximum impact

Remember that tracking and measuring your hashtags is an ongoing process. Continuously test different hashtags, monitor their performance, and adjust your strategy accordingly. Consistent tracking and analysis is key to maximizing the impact of your hashtag marketing efforts.

Hashtag Use Tips & Tricks

Elevating your brand’s visibility and building a loyal community of followers can be achieved through a strategic approach to hashtag usage. Here are some tips to help you create an effective hashtag strategy.:

• Create a mix of popular, relevant, and branded hashtags to build a community of engaged followers.
• Keep hashtags short, simple and easy to remember, avoiding excessive spaces, symbols, punctuation or long phrases.
• Focus on quality over quantity, using only relevant hashtags that add value to each post
• Monitor trending hashtags on social media and use them in an industry-specific way to promote your brand.
• Engage with hashtag users by searching for the hashtags you use, interacting with people using them, and helping your target audience find you.
• Experiment with different hashtags, monitor performance, and make adjustments to optimize your strategy over time.

Metricool Hashtag Generator

Metricool’s hashtag generator allows you to search for relevant hashtags on Instagram and TikTok based on your brand’s keywords. This helps you discover popular, trending, and related tags that can increase the visibility of your content on each platform. The tool provides data on the number of posts for each suggested hashtag, so you can identify the most competitive and trending options.

💡 How to Use Metricool’s TikTok Hashtag Generator

💡 How to Use Metricool’s Instagram hashtag Generator

The hashtag generator is integrated into Metricool’s content planner, making it easy to add the best tags to your scheduled posts.

Gretchen Oestreicher , 16 July 2024