How Important are Hashtags?

For a really long time, hashtags were highly discouraged because it made posts and pictures look messy and people I think started to get scared of change and just said don’t ever use them.

So now this lovely little pound sign is being used across just about every single social media platform there is INCLUDING Pinterest.

Yes, that is right. You can actually use #hashtags on Pinterest. I will get into how to use them on that platform and the best practices as well in a minute!

Here is a breakdown of each of the platforms:

Instagram

Instagram is changing the way that they are using those lovely little pound signs. At the beginning of this year, they are now allowing people to use up to 30 hashtags per post.

There are pros and cons to using that many hashtags.

Here is the conversation being had:

Hashtags on Instagram make it much easier for your post to be searched and seen on the explore page. That being said, people have started using the max of 30 hashtags to “get the most views” That is where the problem comes.

Using 30 hashtags after your post looks spammy, so people have started putting them in the first comment, however, there has been a lot of rumors that Instagram is not actually showing your post in the hashtag that you put in the comment. That’s problem number one.

Problem number two is that people are actually hurting themselves from putting that many hashtags on their post because they aren’t using TARGETED and RELEVANT hashtags. If you aren’t putting time into researching your hashtags and actually trying to make it easy for your target audience to find you, then your failing.

With Instagram, if you use only huge hashtags, your post will move so fast on the explore page that you probably won’t be seen. So, when you use targeted hashtags you will be better off. For example, using #newyorkcity isn’t as good as using #newyorkcitytouristspots

Although people are going to search for New York City, they will have more luck finding you (if you have great content, which I am sure you do) by searching New York City Tourist Spots. This is also a search that a lot of people will make if visiting the city. If you are someone not from New York and are looking to travel there, chances are you’re going to search it.

Facebook

I would not recommend using hashtags on Facebook because that’s kinda just something that is weird and people don’t really use hashtags on that platform yet.

However, if you would like to share your Instagram photo and it has them, then go ahead and do it.  I would definitely recommend sharing your Instagram photos on Facebook because that’s not only more people seeing your Instagram content but it’s more people that will see you sharing stuff on Facebook and will want to know more about what you’re doing!

Pinterest

YOU CAN USE HASHTAGS ON PINTEREST NOW!

Sorry I got a wee bit excited. So you can actually share hashtags on Pinterest now to make it easier to search your pins, however only do it with timely and relevant posts. Also, only use a few targeted hashtags with the post instead of a bunch.

One way to find which hashtags to use would be to search (yes use Pinterest as the search engine it is) what you would search if you were trying to find the information your writing about. Then use the little tags that show up at the top as guidance!

Twitter

Obviously, you use hashtags on Twitter. If not your post would never be seen! Try and do some research on some retweet accounts for bloggers such as #bloggerstyle or something like this so that they can retweet you. This will up your reach on the platform.

You can also use hashtags to get in on current events and have conversations with people!

 

Do you have a question or think I missed explaining something? Let me know in the comments below, shoot me a DM on Instagram or send me an email! I love to hear from you guys!

What do you think about hashtags? Useful or not? Do you use them or are you completely against them? Let me know!

I also encourage you to subscribe to my blog if you are interested in my e-courses because when they launch I will be giving all of my blog subscribers a SUBSCRIBER ONLY discount code + free gift!

6 thoughts on “How Important are Hashtags?

  1. I feel like 30 hashtags are a lot. I only use a few hashtags and sometimes up to 20. But hashtags do work for me as I will find people in the same niche through hashtags but what I do not like is the fact that through the hashtags I do not get the followers I need/deserve.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
https://hannahljohnson.com/how-important-are-hashtags/
hannahljohnson.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2019-35
81760
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:KIASBLATNEALWMMHB7GZQO7MJGIH3XIX
<urn:uuid:f14b09e3-f16d-4d25-85e1-3aff39cf566d>
2019-08-21T22:23:12Z
37.60.235.206
text/html
sha1:LS4ZXF3WAJZ3ATUTTG2HRW3DVJXTVJME
<urn:uuid:d4f3d90d-4832-473b-b58b-c80f7a3807b3>
https://hannahljohnson.com/how-important-are-hashtags/
response
<urn:uuid:a3e17d9c-8384-4e74-bfbf-2bbdfd394a1f>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2019-35
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for August 2019
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-15.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.1-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/