Social Media Marketing

How to Use Hashtags on Different Social Media Platforms: The Ultimate Guide

April 9, 2021
Narine Nazaryan

I know that many people think there is no need to do some research and learn a little bit about hashtags before using them. It’s not rocket science, right? I was one of them. Maybe you think like me.

But hold on.

Do you know how to use hashtags on different social media platforms?

Let’s discover it together. I promise I’ll not bore you and will provide only the necessary information.

In this guide, we’ll take a look at:

What is a Hashtag?

Hashtags are keywords or phrases that allow anyone to find your post. You should add the hash symbol before the keyword and exclude spaces. Hashtags are clickable and, when clicking on them, you will see all the posts that include the specific hashtag.

There are different types of hashtags:

Branded hashtags
Campaign related hashtags
Holiday and celebration hashtags
Event hashtags
News hashtags
Trending hashtags
Industry-related hashtags
Post related hashtags
Challenge hashtags
Community hashtags
Etc

Use different hashtags to reach different communities, and don’t use the same ones over and over again. Try using branded hashtags in all your posts, but don’t overuse them, just sprinkle here and there.

Why Should You Use Hashtags?

The answer is obvious – to get found. But, if you dive deeper, you will be able to:

Raise your brand’s awareness
Engage with your followers
Support social issues
Participate in challenges
Group your posts

How Do You Find Hashtags?

Here you must get as creative as possible because there are so many ways to find hashtags. To make your job easier, here are some ways to find relevant and high performing hashtags:

Use tools
Check what hashtags your industry’s influencers use
Check what your direct and indirect competitors use
Use social media platform’s search bar
Check for trending posts and terms
Related and suggested hashtags
Check different social media channels suggestions
Check Google’s search page suggestions
Check upcoming events

Which Social Media Uses Hashtags

Facebook Hashtags

For a business account use two to three hashtags for your Facebook posts.

Some studies showed that the more hashtags you use the less your engagement will be because Facebook users don’t search for hashtags. They use keywords to find the post they are interested in.

Instagram Hashtags

Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags on a post and 10 hashtags on stories.

The average usage is eleven, but keep in mind that more doesn’t necessarily mean better. One of the best solutions is using up to 5 hashtags on a post and include the remaining hashtags in the first comment of your post. This way you will make your post more user-friendly and attractive.

Choose the hashtags that are niche-specific and have a lower volume of posts. This way your chances are higher to drive your targeted audience’s attention.

Use different hashtags for your posts even if they are similar. This will allow you to engage with more users, and more people will see your post.

LinkedIn Hashtags

Before adding hashtags to your LinkedIn post, remember that it’s a professional network, and the hashtags, that are suitable for Instagram or Twitter, will not drive any engagement here and may even harm your personal or business brand.

It’s a good idea to use up to five hashtags. You don’t want the LinkedIn algorithm marking your post as spam.

When you write a post, LinkedIn automatically suggests relevant hashtags. Most of the time they are a good fit and are based on your post’s context.

YouTube Hashtags

YouTube allows you to add hashtags to the following areas – directly in a video’s title and at the bottom of the video’s description.

Use hashtags in the video’s title alongside relevant keywords. The hashtag in the video title is clickable and takes directly to your video. Be cautious to not spam your title and add more than one or two hashtags.

Add relevant hashtags to the very bottom of your video’s description. Although YouTube allows using up to 15 hashtags in your video description the best practice is adding 3-5 hashtags.

Pinterest Hashtags

Although Pinterest supports hashtags it doesn’t distinguish between hashtags and keywords. It’s very similar to Facebook so use well-researched keywords with one or two keywords.

Twitter Hashtags

It’s interesting to know that hashtags first were used on Twitter in 2007 and gradually spread to other social media channels.

If you use the relevant hashtags on Twitter, they are a very powerful tool that will drive engagement and traffic.

Don’t use hashtags that are popular or trending, use the ones that make sense for your brand or post. Use only two or three relevant hashtags per post.

Tumblr Hashtags

Instead of hashtags, Tumblr uses tags. Although you can add a hash symbol in front of them and make them hashtags 🙂 All you need to know about Tumblr tugs are:

You can add a space between two words in a tag
Only the first 20 tags will be visible
Add separate tags with “Enter” button

TikTok Hashtags

The hashtags you choose can affect your video’s discoverability, so choose the ones that represent the main idea of your video. Try to be as specific as possible and don’t use too general hashtags.

Note that your caption limit is 100 characters. That’s where your hashtags will appear so limit them up to three.

Giphy Hashtags

Giphy allows you to use tags instead of hashtags for your GIFs. It’s recommended to use 10-20 high-quality keywords.

Imgur Hashtags

Similar to Tumblr, Imgur allows to add tags but you can’t add # symbol. You are allowed to add only 5 tags so do your research before choosing the ones that are most relevant to your post.

Triller Hashtags

Triller is filled with celebrities so it’s difficult to get noticed among the famous and popular. Hashtags will help you stand out and find the people who will appreciate your posts. Use 4-5 well-researched hashtags in your posts.

Vimeo Hashtags

Vimeo doesn’t support hashtags. For getting noticed and driving more traffic, add categories and tags to your videos.

You can add up to two categories, one sub-category and up to twenty tags. But, like in the case of the other social media channels, use only 4-5 keywords. Note that too many tags may make it harder to find your video.

Likee Hashtags

Likee is another social media platform that allows users to create short videos. Use 4-5 hashtags per post

Medium Hashtags

In Medium you can add labels to your post to give a general idea of what it is about. Be careful and choose wisely because you can add only 5 labels.

Flicker Hashtags

Flicker allows you to use tags in your photo. As this is a network for photographers, you can use tags like your camera’s name, location, resolution, frame, etc. As there are no statistics about how many hashtags you should use, go with the golden rule and use 4-5. 🙂

DeviantArt, Behance and Dribbble Hashtags

All these social media channels support hashtags. Use relevant hashtags and stick to the golden rule

Takeaway

Your social media marketing strategy must include ongoing hashtags analysis and testing. This way you will have chosen hashtags for your upcoming posts and will allow you to drive amazing results.

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Narine

Narine Nazaryan is a digital marketing specialist with more than 5 years experience in the field and more than 10 years experience in the banking and finances spheres. She is an obsessed reader and content writer. Her hobbies include coding, astronomy, physics and following the latest scientific discoveries. As it is obvious from this short bio, she doesn’t like bragging at all and is a very modest and pleasant person.