4 Ways to Effectively Use Facebook Hashtags

Facebook recently launched Hashtags! After Twitter, Google+, and Instagram, Facebook has also finally joined the bandwagon of social networking sites allowing its users the feature of Hashtagging.

However, even now, long after its introduction, marketers are still unaware of its usage and effectiveness on Facebook.

Here are 4 ways to use Facebook Hashtags:

1) Expand your reach:

Facebook is the most popular social network and has a crowd of 7.5 billion users. It is understandable that with such huge numbers, these #-tags can promote your posts to a larger audience base, attracting new loyalists. These hashtags give you the opportunity to capture the interests of like minded people and crack a conversation.

By including a hashtag in your post, you can get your post to reach people who may not have otherwise seen your post. Keep checking your insights as well as your reach after a particular hashtag post, to check if your engagement rate has gone up.

2) Promote products and events:

You  have seen it work on Twitter, and this should be all the proof you need to know it will work on Facebook. You can promote your social media campaigns, contests and even product promotion using these hash-tags. An added benefit is, that this also enables your Twitter audience to join your Facebook contests easily, as they can easily find you using the required hashtag.

But before trending a hashtag, make sure you do proper research on it. Check to see ensure that the hashtag your brand is planning to promote isn't already being used for an entirely different purpose that doesn't align with the company message at all.

3) Make your own # tag:

Make unique hashtags in your posts to promote something new. Your creative ideas with your hashtag can later become your brand identity!

Branding your Facebook page with your own specially created hashtag can help an idea or new product catch on. By using a new hashtag, you can break this information out into a separate stream and give people an easy way to share information about that product or idea. Think carefully about things that your viewers would also be interested in sharing. If the posts are too promotional and not valuable, you may have a hard time getting people to share them with their friends.

4) Not more than 2 Hashtags:

Posting more than two of them in one status could be overwhelming and will get you too many responses from different arenas. Adding more than two hashtags could trigger confusion which you want to avoid, also making it look cluttered and unprofessional. Choose any two words that could be hashtagged and would define your post better.

In order to stay ahead of the social media curve, you need to engage with your audience at the right moments. Have you tried using hashtags in your posts? Are you going to give them a try? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!