Remember when ‘hashtags’ weren’t a thing? Yeah, neither can we.

It was around the same time that YouTube wasn’t a widely known, universally accessible platform. It meant securing a glimpse of Madonna’s newest music video would elicit an inherent,

somewhat catastrophic Saturday morning of enrage-fuelled channel flicking tantrums between the sole two channels showing music videos. The sheer prospect of a hand-held device that’d eliminate this exercise and instantly, within seconds, show you her latest video from the instant it had been released, defines an exploit nobody in 2021 would bat an eyelid at.

Social media and instant messaging apps didn’t exist either (how we functioned, we aren't sure), and ways of instantly communicating with total strangers across the world on identical topics were rare.

Concurrently, like the way our lives have transformed so significantly within the last decade, so has the age of words and terms once deemed obscure (and not universally understood).

In a past life, # was widely called the button you’d push under the ‘9’ key on a telephone keypad to proceed to the following step of an automatic menu.

Boy have we come far.

The digital revolution has well and truly nudged its way into our lives, people.

‘Social media,’ ‘Insta-famous,’ ‘Selfie,’ ‘Meme’; terms that, once upon a time, meant nothing. Today ‘Hashtag’ certainly means something.

In fact, no social media user is really complete without using one (or two..or three..or more) within their post(s).

So what’s a hashtag in 2021? they're typically posted with social media content and are represented by the # symbol, followed by a word or phrase, and no spaces in between.

This allows social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and yes, even LinkedIn) to seek out conversations from different users on a specific topic and bundle them into one accessible stream.

Users can find posts on an identical topic by attempting to find a specific hashtag or clicking on one within someone’s post.

For example, if you wanted to test out all the conversations happening around #KylieJenner, you’d jump into the search tool on the relevant social network, and sort in #KylieJenner. Bam. Results will flood your page, showing you public content where people have included this particular hashtag.

Ever heard the phrase, ‘Hashtags for likes?’ Plain and straightforward, people use hashtags to own their posts seen by more people. More people seeing your content generally means more likes.

Hashtags can unite conversations around certain topics, causes, events, holidays, celebrations, disasters; you name it.

For example, you might’ve heard the term ‘Wedding hashtag’; which refers to a contemporary trend where couples typically blend their names together into a fun and quirky phrase. Wedding guests (and in fact, the couple getting married) use this phrase as a hashtag, which then is shared with social media posts from and about the event itself. That’s why Wedding Hashtag Generators are super popular online.

If you’re wondering; Do hashtags work on Facebook? Then we’re here to inform you, yes! you would possibly not have seen a Facebook post with one before, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be used.

Want to understand a way to Hashtag? We’ve got you covered. the simplest part is it’s actually quite easy (nothing beats easy).

Ensure each hashtag only contains one word. Don’t include spaces or punctuation within the one word (so, if we were writing open-space, we’d write it as #openspace). you'll be able to also include the hashtag at the beginning, within the middle, or at the very end of your message.

Handy Tip: If you’re getting to include multiple in your post, you'll clean things up a touch by including them at the tip of your post.

Are hashtags worth it? and how.

Organic reach (That is, reach you aren’t paying for) on social media is getting trickier and trickier. Hashtags make this tricky prospect a small amount less tricky. More eyes on a post mean more engagement, more followers (or Likes, for Facebook’s sake). If you would like more proof, here’s a neat little stat for you. Instagram posts with a minimum of one hashtag receive on the average 12.6% more engagement than posts without a hashtag.

How many hashtags are too many?

Instagram, as an example, allows you to own 30 posts. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you wish to fill this quota. It can look spammy, or maybe make a post look cluttered. consistent with research, the highest-performing posts seem to adopt the ‘less is more approach, using approximately two to 5 per post.

Trending hashtags

If you include popular content within your social media post, the likelihood is it’ll be seen by more people. While looking for popular hashtags on a hashtag generator can sometimes work, many tools that try this can incur a value.

You can use the search functions within Instagram, Facebook, Linked In, and Twitter to try and do this (and it won’t cost you a cent). Type #, followed by a specific term or phrase. Instagram, for instance, shows you ways many posts a specific hashtag has. If you’re looking to seek out out the most-used hashtag with the term ‘health’, all you wish to try to do is type in #health, and bam, you’ll receive insights into the most-posted hashtags about ‘health’.

Many Facebook users tend to own their profiles set to personal, meaning that if they use hashtags in their posts, Facebook won’t be able to show that in their search results. this is often why you will notice hashtags on Facebook are typically populated with posts by brands, celebrities, and influencers.

So what are you waiting for? Start experimenting by using hashtags in your social media content to work out the difference it makes.