Hashtags were introduced in 2007, revolutionizing how people connect social media searches to trending topics. Brands worldwide innovatively took advantage of the hashtag “#” movement to create successful marketing campaigns and raise awareness of key social issues. When used appropriately, hashtags positively impact brand building and improve social media marketing strategies.
Learn more about how to leverage social media marketing to raise brand awareness and improve visitor engagement.
How to Use Social Media Hashtags for Social Media Campaigns
X
X (formerly known as Twitter) was the early adopter of the “#” hashtag and had the most daily exchanges of the “#” topics. Hashtags on X work like keywords. They are searchable within the platform for different trending topics.
Facebook links hashtags to user posts as their privacy setting permits. Facebook has a “Trending” section within its newsfeed featuring the most discussed topics with hashtagged keywords.
LinkedIn announced as of July 29th, 2013, that they no longer support the LinkedIn Signal feature, including the use of hashtags. The feature initially allowed users to search for news, status updates, and hashtagged phrases on the platform. The retirement of LinkedIn Signal was the official drop of hashtag usage from LinkedIn.
Instagram is another hashtag-heavy social media platform. It categorizes photos and posts according to hashtags added by users, simplifying photo searches within Instagram.
Hashtags on Pinterest match the search results of tagged keywords. The hashtags in a Pin description can be clicked on and redirected to general search results, which return any variation of terms related to the original hashtagged phrase.
YouTube
YouTube uses hashtagged phrases to yield search results for videos. YouTube commenters widely adopt this practice and is a helpful tool to search for mentioned videos.
