Have you ever seen the “#” symbol on various social networking sites such as Twitter and Instagram? This “#” is called a “hashtag”. Even if you have seen or heard of the word hashtag, many people may not actually know how to use it or its benefits.
Therefore, in this article, we will explain how to use hashtags, which are important in SNS marketing, their benefits, and precautions when using them. By using hashtags appropriately, you can efficiently reach your target users with your posts, so please use this as a reference.
What is a hashtag?
Hashtags are tags that classify keywords and topics on SNS. By entering any keyword after “#”, you can add that keyword to your post as a tag. The feature of this hashtag is that it can clearly express what topic the post is about.
Users can perform a hashtag search to see a list of posts with the same hashtag. Additionally, many users search for hashtags to see posts that interest them, so your posts can reach people who are interested in the same topic.
Reference examples of hashtags
So far, we have provided an overview of hashtags. Here, we will introduce some reference examples of hashtags from Twitter and Instagram, which currently have many users.
For Twitter
When using hashtags on Twitter, be sure to use one that matches the content of the post, such as “#〇〇 (topic)” for the topic you want to tweet about. For example, at our “HR Pro” site, if we are posting about a new article, we use hashtags like “#HR industry trends #DX notable companies #DX research”.
Hashtags that are used frequently are featured as trends. By using trending tags, your posts will reach more users.
Also, hashtags can work for any keyword as long as you pay attention to the three points listed below. Therefore, by creating original hashtags such as “#your activity name” or “#original catchphrase”, you can appeal to users about your content and activities.
For Instagram
On Instagram, hashtags affect the reach of your posts even more than on Twitter.
For example, if you want people to see photos taken at a travel destination, it would be a good idea to add hashtags from various perspectives to your post, such as “#travel,” “#place name,” “#emotion,” “#season,” and “#genre.” Probably. Hashtags from diverse perspectives give you more reach.
Instagram has a characteristic of posting mainly visual information such as images and videos. Therefore, by adding a hashtag in a foreign language, you may be able to gain reach from overseas. Let’s also work on making hashtags multilingual.
For example, it was announced that Yokohama City’s official Instagram account “@findyouryokohama_japan” had over 80,000 followers in May 2021. This account, which has an overseas follower rate of over 40%, has hashtags in Japanese and English along with photos.
Please note that you can only post up to 2,200 characters on Instagram, but you can only add up to 30 hashtags.
History of hashtags
As of August 2023, hashtags are one of the officially supported features. However, this is not a feature that has been implemented since the release of each SNS.
The history of hashtags began when one Twitter user asked participants at an event to “tweet using #.”
This event led to the spread of the custom of using “#〇〇” to express the content of a post. As a result of the use of hashtags becoming established around the world, it is characterized by the fact that it has become an official function with official support.
The origin of hashtags dates back to the 14th century.
The origin of the hashtag dates back to the ancient Roman era around the 14th century, and is said to come from the Latin word “libra pond,” short for “lb,” meaning pound (weight).
Over time, in order to avoid confusing the English word “l” with the number “1”, a short stroke was added to the top of “lb” or a horizontal bar was drawn in the middle. It is said that it changed and became a hashtag.
Source:
GIZMODO History of the “#” symbol. Before hashtags, it was Sharp on the phone.
It was adopted for touch-tone telephones in the late 1960s.
In the late 1960s, Bell Laboratories, an American communications research institute, adopted hashtags for touch-tone telephone buttons.
Touch-tone telephones now allow automatic voice menu button operations that were impossible to operate with rotary telephones.
Then, “hashtag: #” and “asterisk: ＊”, which computers can identify, were adopted as symbols to separate numbers when pressing buttons.
In 1978, it was used in the C programming language.
Hashtags were first used in the C language in 1978 by American computer researcher Brian Kernighan and fellow American programmer Dennis Ritchie.
It was used as a communication tool in 1988 at the dawn of the Internet.
In 1988, at the dawn of the Internet, hashtags were used to label “groups” and “topics” in a text-based real-time online communication tool called “IRC = Internet Relay Chat,” developed by two Finns. Ta.
Hashtags were also used on Twitter in 2007.
Hashtags were also used on Twitter in 2007. Chris Messina, an engineer who is said to have worked at Google and Uber, became the first person in the world to use hashtags in his tweets.
This led to hashtags being used all over the world. August 23rd, when Chris Messina was the first person in the world to use a hashtag, was the anniversary (hashtag birthday) of Twitter at the time, and since then this day has been known as Hashtag Day (#HashtagDay). It became.
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How to add hashtags
Adding hashtags is very easy. You can add a hashtag by simply entering the keyword with “#” in front of it in your post.
However, there are many cases where you may have intended to add a hashtag, but it just didn’t work. This is due to unconsciously adding hashtags incorrectly.
To avoid using hashtags incorrectly, here are three things to keep in mind when adding hashtags.
Use “#” (number) instead of “♯” (sharp)
When adding hashtags, it’s common to make the mistake of using “#” (pound) instead of “#” (number).
Naturally, if you use “#” (sharp), it will not be used as a hashtag. Also, depending on the SNS, even if you use “#” (number), full-width characters may not be recognized. Please make sure to enter in half-width characters before posting.
Don’t create hashtags that are just numbers
It is best to avoid hashtags that only contain numbers, as it is difficult to understand the meaning of the post when you look at the hashtag alone.
Also, Twitter does not allow hashtags that are just numbers. If you want to include a hashtag related to numbers, it will be recognized by including characters other than numbers.
For example, if you want to use a hashtag for a New Year’s tweet, instead of just using numbers like “#2022”, combine it with letters like “#2022”.
Insert a space before and after “#〇〇”
If you do not include half-width spaces before and after “#〇〇”, the entered string will not be recognized as a hashtag. Also, be especially careful when including hashtags in the text of your posts.
If you enter a hashtag without spaces, it will be recognized as part of the text and the hashtag will no longer work. Even when adding multiple hashtags, leave a space between each hashtag.
3 benefits of using hashtags
There are three main benefits to using hashtags.
I will explain the above three advantages in order.
Connect with users who have the same goals and awareness
Many users post with hashtags that align with their goals and consciousness. Users who see the post can click on the hashtag in the post to see a list of posts with the same hashtag.
With this feature, adding a hashtag will increase the chances that your post will be seen by people who have the same specific purpose or mindset.
Reach a wider range of users
Many users post with hashtags on SNS, and posts with hashtags reach the majority of users.
Many users check hashtags in posts, so you have the advantage of reaching a wider range of users.
Understand trends from hashtags
By using hashtags, you can understand current trends. For example, did you know that Twitter has a feature called “Recommended Trends” in its search results?
In this recommended trend, you can check the hashtags that are posted the most in real time, and you can get an idea of the trends from here.
When you enter a keyword in the search box on Instagram, hashtags related to the entered keyword are displayed along with the number of posts, so you can use this as a reference to understand posting trends.
In this way, you can use hashtags to find out about current trends and hot topics.
When to use hashtags
So far, we have explained the overview and benefits of hashtags. From here, we will introduce two situations in which you should use hashtags.
If you want to send a post to a specific user
Hashtags are useful when you want to reach a specific user with your post. For example, let’s say you want to deliver a post to a provider of a certain service.
SNS is a place where service providers can hear the real voices of users, so they often check it regularly. Therefore, by posting using the hashtag “#service name”, the possibility that your post will reach the service provider will greatly increase.
In this way, by using hashtags that you think your target audience is checking, you can reach your target audience.
When holding a campaign
Previously, when holding a campaign, participants were required to register as users. However, now users can easily participate in campaigns by having them post with a special hashtag.
By lowering the hurdles for users to participate in a campaign, it has the effect of encouraging more users to participate. In fact, there is a case in point where a campaign using hashtags increased the awareness of a service by 200%, which shows that hashtags are extremely important in marketing as well.
Advantages of hashtags especially for business
Some of the benefits of hashtags especially for business include:
Increase campaign participation rate
SNS has now become an indispensable tool for companies when conducting campaigns.
However, at the time when SNS became popular, it was necessary to register users one by one in order to get them to participate in the campaign, which was a hassle and made it difficult to attract participants as desired.
Hashtags have solved this barrier. To participate in a campaign, simply create a hashtag with the keyword that you think is best suited for the campaign and ask users to post using the same hashtag.
There is no need to register as a user, and there is no need to go to an external site. This ease of use makes it easy to recruit people to participate in campaigns, and there are cases where companies have actually improved the awareness of their services. Users can also participate in campaigns while enjoying their favorite posts.
Easy to collect posts
By using hashtags, you can easily collect user posts. When conducting a campaign or promotion, it is important to find out how many related posts there are on SNS in order to understand the spread rate.
However, posts without hashtags will display unrelated posts, and human resources will be wasted on aggregating them. Therefore, by having users post with hashtags, it becomes possible to grasp how much information is being spread without having to do aggregation work.
Can reach a wider range
As explained in the “History of Hashtags” section above, hashtags have a long history, and their use and role on SNS are now widely recognized.
In particular, Twitter has announced that by August 2022, there were approximately 17 billion tweets containing hashtags.
Reference:
Twitter Blog 15 years ago Hashtags were born from Twitter
Hashtags have already become an indispensable function for users to search for highly relevant posts and accounts, and due to their wide recognition and high frequency of use, they are said to be able to reach a wider range of people. There are benefits.
Find related posts
You can also find posts related to your products and services more easily by adding hashtags to your search.
By collecting and analyzing these posts, we can learn about users’ latent and actual needs, which can lead to the development of new products and services, as well as improvements to existing products and services. .
Learn about users from related posts
For example, if you are planning a business strategy to develop and sell “portable fans,” you can conduct a preliminary research using keywords with hashtags such as “#portable fans,” “#handheld fans,” and “#handy fans.” .
Then, from the hit posts, we will learn what kind of posts are there, what users are looking for and what they are dissatisfied with, and we will read related posts and connect them to product development.
You can also see how to promote
Also, if you can read from posts how users take the product and how they use it in what situations, you will naturally be able to figure out how to promote it.
It also makes it easier to understand things like, “This type of promotion will make the product look more attractive,” and “This type of advertising will make the product more likely to sell.” Analyzing users from related posts in this way is a very important task when formulating business strategies.
Easier to manage posts
If you use hashtags wisely, you can easily manage posts across multiple accounts. In order to carry out campaigns and promotions efficiently, there are cases where multiple accounts are developed and carried out simultaneously.
However, managing multiple SNS accounts takes up human resources, and it is quite difficult to check posts from each separate SNS account with limited human resources. That’s why you use hashtags.
By setting a hashtag for each campaign or promotion, you can easily check the posting status of each account.
Points to note when posting with hashtags
Don’t use hashtags that are too long
When adding hashtags, be careful not to make them too long. For example, let’s say you add the hashtag “#Giant Takoyaki in Dotonbori, Osaka”. However, very few posts actually have such hashtags.
Of course, it’s also true that fewer users search with such long hashes. In order to reach as many users as possible, use hashtags for each keyword, such as “#Osaka #Dotonbori #Giant Takoyaki.”
Use only hashtags that are relevant to your post
Don’t use hashtags that are unrelated to your post just because you want it to be seen by a lot of people. Abuse of hashtags is regulated and may be flagged as spam. Be sure to use keywords as hashtags that match the content of your post.
Avoid posting too many posts with hashtags in a row
Repeatedly posting posts with hashtags may be considered a nuisance as mentioned above. From a user’s perspective, it’s best to refrain from posting multiple posts with hashtags, as this can cause your followers to leave your site.
summary
In this article, we explained the meaning of hashtags, how to use them, and precautions to take when using them. Hashtags do more than just increase the reach of your posts.
Hashtags are also an important key in SNS marketing, as they can be used during campaigns and to check current trends.
Using this article as a reference, why not start by checking out trending hashtags and actually posting using them?