How frequently should you use hashtags to engage with your audience properly

Image from Flickr user Esther Vargas. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

With the ever increasing use of social media, hashtags have been ubiquitous. The pound (hash, #) sign turns a word or group of words accompanying the sign into a searchable link. It makes your post more searchable, allows you to follow a certain ongoing conversation in social media and search user-generated content.  

However, in spite of the usability of hashtags we’re often not sure on how to use them properly – how frequently use them in our posts in different social media platforms. As suggested by social media experts, each platform has its own specialty and we need to add hashtags to our posts accordingly.

Facebook
Facebook posts without a hashtag fare better than those with a hashtag, recommends Andrew Hutchinson in SocialMediaToday.

However, social media experts recommend using 1 or 2 sensible hashtags, especially industry specific, event specific or campaign specific (if you’re using it for a campaign) for maximum interaction.

Instagram
Use of branded (specific to your brand or company) and community hashtags are a must to interact with your followers on Instagram. While the branded hashtags help you get most loyal followers to engage and improve brand awareness, community hashtags help you make your content more discoverable and build your audience.

However, you make sure you bundle up all your hashtags at the end of the post rather than putting them in between the post.

Experts suggest using more than 10 hashtags in your Instagram posts, but make sure you don’t use more than 30 tags. As Instagram Help Center suggests, don’t use more than 30 tags on a single photo/video. If you do so, your comment won’t get posted.


Twitter
Don’t use more than two hashtags in a Twitter post and keep your hashtags relevant to what you’re tweeting about.

Make sure to generate your own specific hashtags during special events so as to track the ongoing conversation and engage with like-minded people.


LinkedIn
Though it was useless using hashtags in your LinkedIn posts earlier, I would suggest using 1-2 hashtags in a LinkedIn post. LinkedIn Help suggests: “There are no limits to the number of hashtags that can be added to each article, but you should choose your hashtags wisely, so they reach the most suitable members for that article.”


Want to know more? Here’s a pin detailing the use of hashtags.