As a digital marketer, hashtags are an art you need to master. Using the right hashtags can improve the outreach of a campaign and even help you craft the image you want for your brand. You can use hashtags on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and more but rules can vary slightly from one social network to another.

Most social media users are aware of hashtags but few know how to use them. Here are five tips to help you get started with hashtagging your posts.

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   Choose The Right Hashtag For The Right Network

You will find that the best hashtag practices vary from one site to another. In fact, a community or age group might use hashtags differently from another on the same social network.

If you are posting on Instagram, you will find that it is not uncommon to use between five and ten hashtags per post. However, Facebook users would use a couple of hashtags for the same content and carefully choose the hashtags to describe a topic of conversation.

2. Use Specific Hashtags

Using specific hashtags will help you reach out to users and engage with other brands. The more specific a hashtag is, the more discoverable your content will be for users who are interested in what you post.

Take the time to do some research on topics relevant to your brand to see which hashtags are used by the audience interested in this topic. If you are advertising to a local audience, find out which hashtags are popular in your location.

3. Use Campaign-Specific Hashtags

You need to either use branded hashtags or a hashtag that is unique to each of your campaigns. These hashtags will help create a discussion around your content. Users can easily explore more content linked to your brand with these hashtags, and engage with your brand online.

You could, for instance, organize a competition on social media and ask users to share their content with your brand-specific hashtag to enter the competition.

4. You Don’t Need To Put Hashtags Everywhere

Remember that hashtags are there to make your content easier to find. There is no need to add as many hashtags as possible to a post. This won’t help more users find it, and a lot of users will actually find this practice annoying and choose to ignore your posts.

Choose the most relevant hashtags for your content, and make sure they add value by describing your content and by making your post easier to find for users who are interested in these hashtags.

5. Hashtags Should Be Easy To Understand

A hashtag should be concise and easy to understand. This is especially important when creating a brand or campaign hashtag. Users won’t interact with the hashtag if it is too long to type or not easy to read.

Your goal is to facilitate interactions with your audience, so make sure your hashtags aren’t difficult to find or add to a post.