On the one hand, a hashtag is just a hash mark on the keyboard. On the other hand, it is a symbol of the digital age. Thanks to him, various social movements appeared, for example, #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, and people began to use this sign-in daily communication. In this article, how hashtags appeared, what value they have, and how to use them.
How did hashtags come about?
The history of the hashtag began in 2007 when former Google designer Chris Messina proposed using the hash sign to organize messages on Twitter – the social network was still gaining momentum. So, the hashtag has become a tag, a keyword or phrase that makes it easier to search by topic and content.
The new feature was first used by attendees at the August South by Southwest festival in Austin. Messina suggested using tags to follow the event on Twitter without being distracted by other feeds.
In October, wildfires that struck California sparked a surge in hashtag popularity – people used them to share news and stay updated.
In 2007, the most popular hashtag was used more than 9 thousand times, and ten years later, users posted 125 million hashtags every day.
Hashtags opened up a new dimension on Twitter – the company developed an automated hashtag search engine, and soon other platforms began to use the tag.
Why are hashtags important?
A hash mark in front of a word makes a hyperlink out of it. Thus, each hashtag becomes an anchor that allows you to find and group posts from the same topic on social networks.
It is important to note that different platforms give outposts by hashtags in a certain sequence.
Twitter: It shows all posts that have a hashtag. The user decides whether to read only the popular ones or watch the newest ones.
Facebook and Instagram. Above are the posts that are the most popular and have the most likes, comments, and saves.
Hashtag types
1.Profile Navigation
Anton is a popular travel blogger. He has traveled to many countries, knows all the pros and cons of each location, has become an expert on how to get through a long airport transfer, and loves to share life hacks.
In 2017, Instagram provided an opportunity to subscribe to hashtags.
Every day he publishes at least one post with useful information. To make it easier for subscribers to have the desired overview, he created headings by country and hashtags in each thematic publication.
2.Geographic
Such hashtags are tied to a place – most often a district, city or country. Use them if you provide services or sell products through your account. For more efficiency, glue the service name and geotags.
3.Branded
These are hashtags mentioning the brand name. With their help, you can search for UGC and track its reputation, work with negativity and respond to reviews about the company. If you have launched a contest or challenge, then using hashtags, you can track all participants in the activity.
Masha goes through a writing marathon of 2 weeks long. Every day she writes a post and at the end puts the hashtag #marathon_day_2, thanks to which mentors can find her post and leave a comment.
Hashtags for Instagram
Instagram is the most reliable social network for hashtags, and you can use up to 30 in one post. Put hashtags at the beginning of the post if it’s a rubricator or at the end if they don’t carry a functional load.
To hide hashtags from a post, add them in the first comment – this will not affect your search in any way.
In addition, you can attach a hashtag to a story, and there is a special sticker for this. By clicking on it, you will see all the stories under this hashtag and be taken to the thematic feed.
To go to the hashtag feed directly, enter the query through the “#” search, for example, # freshyagodyspb. You can also subscribe to this hashtag there – then posts with its mention will appear in your feed along with other subscriptions.
Hashtags for Twitter
As intended, the Twitter hashtag is a label for sorting posts by category. A fountain of tags is not welcome here, as in Instagram, so the optimal number for one post is 1-2 hashtags.
The platform has a separate section, “Trending Topics,” that lists popular hashtags. This section is constantly changing – the set of tags depends on geolocation, current events in the world and the number of mentions of the keyword by users. For example, during the US elections, the most frequently posted tags were #Trump and #Biden.
Hashtags for Facebook
You can use hashtags on Facebook, but it’s not very useful. At the most, show your involvement and knowledge of the current schedule. One or two hashtags per post are more than enough.
Hashtags for TikTok
A new and so popular social network with its own rules of the game. The very essence of the site – viral videos and challenges show that hashtags are an important promotion tool. Without it, the video will not appear in the thematic feed and will not receive the possible coverage.
Beyond reach, it shape communities. If a user often watches videos with the same hashtags, TikTok will show similar content at the top of the search results.
The same is true for brand hashtags – for example, the cosmetics brand Glossier uses the hashtag #glossier to bring all the lovers of the company’s products into a single community.
Challenges and jingles. I was hoping you could think of the extremely popular self-isolation track I’m bored in the house. The number of views on only one #boredinthehouse tag is 4.7 billion – that is, more than half of the world’s population.
Hashtag rules
- Write hashtags in one word without spaces. In writing, you can use letters, numbers, underscore, emoticons.
- Short and catchy hashtags are the key to success.
- To be more effective, hashtags must be relevant and contain keywords that people can use to search for information about a product or company.
- The search involves hashtags posted by the company in its post or the comment below. The company’s hashtags are not included in the comments of other accounts in the search.
