One of the most common questions I get asked about social media marketing is “Are hashtags on Facebook effective?” and until recently it has been a fairly unanswered question. Yes, Facebook allows users to view related posts from hashtags, however, it was not widely used. Effectively using hashtags on Instagram and Twitter, however, has always been a great method for gaining organic reach. It looks like Facebook has finally caught up!
Recent Appearance of Hashtags on Facebook
Facebook has made a push to inform users they can improve their organic reach by including hashtags in their posts.
While there haven’t been many new studies to inform whether or not it will be as effective as platforms like Twitter and Instagram, Facebook expert Mari Smith shared some of her insights on the new promotion of hashtag use on Facebook.
How Business Pages Can Capitalize on Hashtags
Recently, you may have seen Facebook giving you the option to browse similar posts for the included hashtag. This means that if you have posts with the same hashtag you have available impressions for users who may not be following your page but are interested in a topic you are posting about.
Can you say JACKPOT?
As someone who has been running business pages for myself and clients for years, this is very exciting news! Even if you don’t have a social media management or marketing agency like Elevated Audience, this is something you can do on your own and do it very well!
Should You Be Using Hashtags on Facebook?
The answer is YES! 100% YES!
That doesn’t mean you should go overboard and fill all the remaining characters of every post with hashtags. Pick 3 – 5 to start and see what happens.
As mentioned before, there is no new data to support how your organic reach will grow but hey, you have nothing to lose! And let’s not forget, Facebook is telling us to use hashtags so we can reason with a good amount of certainty their algorithms are going to support the posts that do include them.
In the above image, you can see Facebook is giving you some free information about the popularity of a keyword. Now is the time to start using hashtags before every other business catches on. You have a competitive advantage.
The same #webdesign that has 128k posts on Facebook, on Instagram has 7.3M posts! That’s almost 57 TIMES more posts!
