Hashtags on Facebook have always been a little puzzling. They first launched back in 2013 and have never taken off or been overly successful- until now!
Facebook is starting to push the use of hashtags in posts so that you can increase your organic reach. Even if they only increase your reach a tiny bit, it’s worth it right?! We may as well make use of the feature, especially since we are already adding hashtags to our Instagram posts.
As with all Facebook updates, they are slowly rolling out new features to assist the use of hashtags. Some users are reporting seeing a “Browse” button at the bottom of some posts to discover more about an included hashtag. Others are reporting seeing a pop-up notification prompting you to add hashtags to your posts to improve your reach. Though we haven’t seen these features on our Facebook accounts just yet, we are confident they will be here soon.
As you have always been able to, you can still click on hashtags or search for certain hashtags in the search bar to discover more posts with that certain hashtag. The posts you will see on the Facebook hashtag feeds are only posts that are set to publicly visible, or posts from friends if shared to friends only, so you will not see posts from profiles and pages that have tighter privacy settings.
Some top tips for using hashtags on Facebook:
- Start including hashtags into your posts now! Don’t wait for the additional features to roll out as some users looking at your posts may already have these features.
- Hashtags must be written as a single word without any spaces and can include numbers, but punctuation and special characters won’t work.
- Find hashtags by typing in the search bar. For example, if you type #marketing in the search bar, we start to get a list of suggestions such as #marketingagency #marketingtips and #marketingdigital.
- Just like we do for Instagram, create a couple groups of hashtags that you can simply copy and paste into your posts (but make sure to add extra hashtags relevant to the post). This will save you time rewriting hashtags for each post.
- Use hashtags both in the content of your post, as well as at the end.
- If you are struggling to come up with hashtags, use the features on Instagram such as discover and related hashtags to give you ideas. Read our blog here on how to find hashtags in Instagram.
- Test to see what works for you and your brand in terms of the number of hashtags you use. We recommend using 2-3 in the content and then 8-10 at the end of the post; but use more if you wish! Test using different amounts of hashtags and figure out what works best for you.
- Consider going back to some of your best performing past posts and add hashtags to them!
Hashtags will increase the chances of your brand being found online. When adding a hashtag to a post you are creating an opportunity for potential customers to find your post. Even if it only makes a small difference, it is worth it if you can reach more people that would have never found your brand otherwise. If nothing else, hashtags give you a chance to experiment and hey, who knows what Facebook might have around the corner for hashtags!
