Using hashtags is essentially a way to group together conversations or content around a certain topic, making it easy for people to find content that interests them.
Hashtags can be used on just about any social media platform, and a good social media strategy should include a mix of popular, relevant, and branded hashtags.
This post breaks down the basic anatomy of effectively using hashtags on social media.
Drive discovery. The primary use of a well thought out #hashtag is for viewers to find your content. Hashtags are critical for driving discovery, and it applies to all social media these days. Particularly Instagram, Twitter, and increasingly more and more on LinkedIn. It’s important to choose related hashtags that are already being used by other social media profiles, as these hashtags can start to trend, and most importantly pull eyeballs toward your content. CAUTION: You don't want to "hashtag jack" just to hashtag jack. Using #hastags from other posts can help, but you must make a concerted effort to ensure they remain relevant to what you are posting. If your post has used a trending hashtag, it can appear when new users are looking for content by navigating via that hashtag. It's a great way to participate in different social media trends.
Give context to a message. Hashtags like pathways or windows into more in-depth content. These little tags are gold waiting to be discovered in the mountains terrain of the social oceans of content. They are also used more generally to provide context for a message and thereby use fewer words. The hashtag gives context to the other words in the post: “How are we all doing today? #coronavirus” means something totally different than “How are we all doing today? #ukraine.”
Create an anchor. Hashtags are like markers, that can be scooped by algorithms as well as trend seekers. They mark your content for trends but also they mark your content as your content. They can be considered as anchors, and when used for creating an anchor it can be the focus that your organization uses around a central theme or subject. If, for example, you’ve created a report about developing Air Force Doctrine at Air University, and you post notes and content from the doctrine to drive awareness about it, you could use the hashtag #YourAFDoctrineLivesAtAU or #FindYouInDoctrine in all of your posts to create a way to anchor the different posts together as well as create a concept that spans multiple social media platforms.
Reference events. Another key part of the hashtag anatomy is the effect of using hashtags for your events. These can be used for yearly recurring events, such as #scholarleader or #readerleader, and they can be associated with specific events such as a conference, like #AWS23 or #DAFITC22.
Where do they go?