Hashtags help more people find your brand on social media when they do searches related to your business line or words you’ve hashtagged. It’s a simple way to build your brand, boost campaign ads, stay in touch with your target audience, and be visible to more people.

Using hashtags on social media is not rocket science. You only need to find the right keyword and use the hashtag (#) sign before adding the keyword.

Let’s look at more reasons why you need to use hashtags in your social media content and the ways you can use hashtags for some of the social networks.

Some things you should know about using hashtags

• Avoid stringing many words to one hashtag. For example, #usinganhashtagthislongservesnopurpose. It might even make you lose some engagements.
• Ensure your account is public before using a hashtag so that people can find your post.
• Avoid using too many hashtags on a post

Reasons to use a hashtag

Hashtags are social media’s essentials for every content you post. There are lots of reasons you want to include them in your search. Here are the three first reason:

To boost engagement

According to Twitter, brands get up to a 50 percent increase in engagements when they use hashtags. It also helps to increase retweets and shares.

Brand building

You can use hashtags to build your brands by hashtagging every post you make with your brand’s name. You can also include them when announcing new products to attract more attention.

Find your target audience

Want to get more people to see your brand without campaign ads? Include hashtags in every content you post. It works mainly on Instagram where people can click on suggested hashtags and see all recent posts carrying that hashtag. If they check out your profile and love your contents, you get more followers.

Using the right hashtags

You can use any word you please for hashtags, but if you want to make effective use of hashtags for brand building, you need to use the right ones. The question now is how do you find the right hashtags for your brand? Here are some few suggestions

Use hashtag finding tools

If you don’t want to rack your brain or go snooping around various top influencer’s posts (which is also an excellent method) to see the hashtags they are using, try out tools like Hashtagify.me. You can use this tool to search for specific top influencers related to your niche or brand.

For example, if you are searching for top influencers in fashion, the tool will help you identify them. Then you can check the keywords they are using and incorporate them to your posts too.

Another tool you can use for hashtag suggestion is the RiteTag.com. When you use it while making social media posts, it gives you hashtag suggestions to add instantly. You only need to install its browser extension so that while typing your posts, you get hashtag suggestions.

Keep up with trends

Use trending topics in your industry or line of business to make up hashtags. You can also add trending hashtags related to your industry to let your followers know you are up-to-date with happenings around you.

Use specific hashtags

For example, if you run a professional copywriting services, it’s more accurate to use #copywriting than #writing because there are various forms of writing and when people are searching for writers, they tend to be specific about the kind of writers they want be it ghostwriters, content writers, ebook writers, etc.

When you are specific with your hashtags, you become more visible to your target audience rather than the general social users. So before posting the next content, add some keywords specific to your brand.

Use hashtags according to networks

You might be tempted to use the same hashtags for Facebook on Twitter, but it doesn’t work that way. Using a hashtag on Instagram might be based on the image or video you are sharing. But if you are using it on twitter, it has to base on the conversations or trending topics.

Take out time to see how hashtags work for different social networks to know how to condition yours when posting. You should also find out the popular tags used in each social networks. Luckily, some social media network like Twitter will give guidelines on how to select the right labels for your posts.

Using hashtags on social media networks-

Here is a simple guide on how to use hashtags on social media networks such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn:

Twitter

Users take advantage of the search button on Twitter to find posts using a specific hashtag. So, you can make your page more visible by using these hashtags on your posts.

The recommended number of hashtags to use on Twitter is 1-2. Avoid going overboard to allow posts to reach your target audience. Also, use hashtags relating to your posts so that you don’t attract the wrong type of followers who cannot connect with your brand.

Instagram

Instagram is probably the home of hashtag usage. You can use 9-15 hashtags for a single post, and it brings likes and followers almost immediately! When you think of any network that boosts engagement through the use of the hashtag, it’s Instagram.

When using hashtags on Instagram, use only those that are relevant to the contents you are putting out to reach your target audience and avoid getting reported by other users if you use irrelevant hashtags.

Facebook

The Facebook social network does not require many hashtags, and people hardly remember to use them. The highest number of hashtags you should use is 2. You can also use the Facebook URL facebook.com/hashtag/ to monitor your hashtags.

LinkedIn

Like Facebook, LinkedIn does not support using multiple hashtags seeing that it is a platform for professional networking. It is even of recent that LinkedIn started allowing hashtags. You should only use a maximum of two hashtags in your LinkedIn posts and articles to improve your search ranking.