Tips for the correct use of hashtags in social media

Hashtags help to simplify the search within a network

A hashtag (composed of hash for a character and a double cross, the English tag = marking) is a keyword that makes news on certain topics or with certain content findable in social networks. But hashtags have other functions such as categorizing a post, simplifying search, filtering and sorting content, search engine optimization (SEO), announcing event and location data, tagging companies/people, starting views, and more.

But hashtags can be used not only on social media, blogs and the web in general. They can also be found in print formats. There, for example, hashtags refer to a specific action or call for action. Hashtags can be within body text or before or after the actual text. Social media channels such as Pinterest, Facebook, Tiktok or Twitter use hashtags to make it easier to search within their network for terms tagged in this way. Hashtags can also be used to analyze trends and relevant topics on social media channels. Trend analyses can be carried out with appropriate monitoring tools.

How to find the proper hashtags?

First, get an overview of popular hashtags on social media channels. Even if you want to create your own hashtags, keep the following advice in mind to properly push your posts and generate more reach. Because: The more often a posted hashtag is shared, the higher its reach on the web!

1. Basics

Every hashtag needs a keyword. Year numbers are useful if you want to refer to a specific action. Please leave out spaces or special characters, lower or upper case does not matter, although it is common to write hashtags exclusively in lower case.

2. Find popular hashtags

Via free hashtags lists, e.g. Top-Hashtags (only for hashtags on Instagram) or Hashtagify, you can get an idea of the most popular hashtags that have already achieved high reach. Best-Hashtags offers a cross-platform hashtag index with search function from A to Z.

3. Create your own hashtags

If you want to create your own hashtags, you can get inspiration from Best-Hashtags. Clever hashtags can be used to highlight marketing campaigns or products.

The hashtag can be #ProduktXYistda, for an event #XY2022 or the abbreviation of the event name. Despite all the creativity, please always make sure that the hashtag is not too long, because long hashtags are not very user-friendly.

4. How many hashtags are practical?

There is no general statement about this. It depends on the respective platform! Here is an overview of the now established “unofficial” rules:

On Instagram applies:

• Use at least 3-5 popular hashtags with more than 500,000 entries
• In addition, employ niche hashtags (less than 25,000 entries that relate to your topic (product, theme, service)
• And make sure you have 1-3 brand hashtags as well!

Because posts on Twitter, called tweets, are limited to 280 characters, a long list of hashtags is not possible. The recommendation is to use no more than 2 hashtags and best to integrate them directly into the post text:

“Our online event #xy2021 will be held in #city … ”

On Facebook, hashtags are only slowly coming into play. They are used primarily for categorization. Therefore, a few targeted hashtags are sufficient here.