Let's Hash This Out

Takapa Media • December 22, 2021

Hashtags can be a great way to help improve your visibility and engagement on social media. But what are the most effective ways to use them? If you ask a room of ten marketers what the best practices are for using hashtags, you'll probably get eleven opinions. There's a lot of debate in the digital marketing community about topics like how many you should use, where you should put them, and what platforms you should use them on. Here at Takapa, we use hashtags on a daily basis for our clients and we've learned a lot about them over the years. Here are our top five observations about hashtag best practices:

1) The Platform Matters: While hashtags are a standard feature on all major social media networks, the results vary from platform to platform. For example, social networks like Twitter and Instagram "grew up" with hashtags, and their users are accustomed to discovering new content using hashtags. That's the case with TikTok as well because hashtags have been an important tactic for them since pretty much day one. Facebook was very late to the hashtag party. There is very little evidence that users actually use hashtags to discover content. Thus, you shouldn't expect any substantial lift when adding them to your Facebook posts.

2) Separate Them From Your Copy: The consensus about where to put hashtags changes in the digital marketing community on a fairly regular basis. Some marketers like to include hashtags in their caption but separate them from the copy by adding periods and extra rows between the copy and the hashtags. Some marketers recommend putting the hashtags as the first comment, and some clever copywriters like to incorporate the hashtags directly into the copy itself. There really isn't a "right" answer. Whether you add the hashtags as the first comment or you put them in the caption is a personal preference and won't affect your discoverability or engagement. If you like the look of nice clean copy, put them as the first comment. If you don't want to muddy up your engagement numbers by having a comment that isn't from a user show up in your reports, then leave the hashtags as the caption but make sure there is some separation between the hashtags and your copy.

3) Make Sure They're Relevant: It's very tempting to try to increase your discoverability and engagement by hopping on whatever the latest trending hashtags are. In our opinion, it's better to keep your hashtags relevant to the content you're posting rather than trying to piggyback on trends that aren't relevant to your content. As a user, there's nothing more annoying than searching for specific types of content and having unrelated topics pop up. It leaves a negative impression in the user's mind and you don't want to be associated with that feeling.

4) Experiment, Experiment, Experiment: One of the nice things about hashtags is that they're free so you can experiment to your heart's content and the consequences are minimal. Not happy with some of your current results? Bust out that thesaurus and look for similar words to what you might be using and try those. Think you're not getting the impressions you want? Maybe try increasing the number of hashtags you're using. Are you stuck in a rut? Head over to the discovery page on Instagram or look at the trending topics on Twitter for more ideas.

5) Find a Tool: There's no shame in bringing in a heavy hitter if you need some hashtag inspiration. Some social media platforms have hashtag discovery baked into them, but if yours doesn't, or you post natively, there are a lot of great sites like Hashtagify, Keyhole, or Tailwind that can not only inspire but they can help you track your results. A small investment in a platform can actually save you money by increasing your productivity and giving you better results.

These are just a few of our favorite tips and tricks. If you want to learn more, there are hundreds of great resources online. Or, as always, you can contact us. We love helping our clients hash through their hashtag strategy!

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