Think that Hashtags have become irrelevant in 2022? Think again! Here’s why hashtags might be more important than ever for social media exposure and how to use the algorithm to your advantage:
Since hashtags were officially adopted by Twitter in 2009, they have consistently let us know what is trending and have allowed us to filter through the immense amount of information on the internet. While that is still true, hashtags are less commonly used for searches, and are now more utilized by the algorithms on social media to categorize and distribute posts. The way you tag your posts will influence how they are categorized, boosted, and seen by your desired audience.
Thats why it is important that any hashtags you’re using are related to your most relevant content so that it will be seen by the right audience. This is where things can become tricky: you want to use hashtags that will reach a wide audience while still targeting your specific crowd. Generic tags cast too wide of a net and will often get lost in the sea of other posts (for example, any of the highest trending tags won’t do much for a small business account). On the other hand, tags that are incredibly specific to only your company aren’t often being searched for. Once you find your middle ground, pull together the hashtags that are useful to you and keep them in a place you can reference. A great way to do this is to look at other accounts that have the audience you’re hoping to gain, and utilize the hashtags that are also relevant to your account! That being said, you don’t want to tag all of your posts identically or else your account might be flagged. It’s always important to shake it up and specify based on the content within individual posts.
One of the more important tips we can share is the recommendation for the number of hashtags utilized per post. While that number used to be between 10-20 per Instagram post, it has recently dropped significantly due to how accurate the algorithm analyzes both captions and hashtags to boost posts to the right audiences. That new number is between 3-5 per post…seems like nothing? Yes. But its all for the best! The fewer tags you use, the more reliably your content will be categorized. Which means you have more control over that distribution if you use hashtags to your advantage! While Instagram only recommends 3-5 per post, Twitter is even less at 1-2, Facebook at 2-3, and LinkedIn at 1-5.
The overall takeaway: Hashtags are still relevant, less is more when it comes to working with the algorithm, specified tags bring content to your desired audience, and while they aren’t utilized for their original purpose they are still one of the best ways to increase your engagement online.
