How do tags work

Do you know how to use hashtags? How about how not to use hashtags? Your brand can do a lot more. This post breaks down the basics of effectively using hashtags on social media and why you should use them. Bonus: Read the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence.

A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by the pound symbol. On social media, it serves as an indication for users and algorithms that a piece of content relates to a specific topic or belongs to a category. Hashtags help make content discoverable in on-platform searches and, effectively, reach more people. The pound symbol on your keyboard—also called an octothorpe— was initially used to mark numbers. They were first used as hashtags in the summer of by Chris Messina. As in barcamp [msg]?

Since then, the use of hashtags, their reach, and their effectiveness has only grown. Hashtags are a way to connect social media content to a specific topic, event, theme or conversation. Hashtags are effective on other social media platforms too.

Find more details on how to use hashtags for each platform below. Including hashtags in your posts means taking part in a conversation happening on that social media platform. And most importantly, it makes your posts visible in that conversation. Creating a branded hashtag can be an effective way to promote your business and drive conversations. It has universal appeal, and was one of the most-used hashtags by Canadians in the first half of WeTheNorth pic.

This contest encouraged followers to purchase Cheerios products and also spread awareness of the brand by posting photos on social media.

Find a heart inside your Cheerio and share it using the hashtag CheeriosHeartHuntSweepstakes for a chance to win cash prizes. For example, the Canadian telecommunications company Bell uses the branded hashtag BellLetsTalk to promote mental health awareness.

Double T Ranch integrates horses into therapy to support those recovering from addiction and trauma. Learn more. You have characters , to be exact. Same with Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn or any other platform—sometimes less is more. Using the Apollo50th hashtag was part of its digital campaign. Hashtags contextualize this creative Tweet, making it clear that NASA is celebrating both the anniversary and taking part in the World Emoji Day conversation.

Customer service software. Content management system software. Premium plans. Operations software. Connect your favorite apps to HubSpot. See all integrations. We're committed to your privacy. HubSpot uses the information you provide to us to contact you about our relevant content, products, and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time. For more information, check out our privacy policy. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world , so keyword-optimizing your videos on the platform is just as important as keyword-optimizing your blog posts for Google.

One of the best ways to keyword-optimize your videos for YouTube is leveraging tags. The rise of semantic search has made YouTube tags less important over time, but they're still a strategic element you can use to your advantage. Even though YouTube sites the title, thumbnail, and description as being more important for video SEO on their platform , studies do indicate that there's a slight positive relationship between keyword-optimized tags and ranking Backlinko.

Neglecting to use them isn't a dealbreaker, but they can definitely help. They're even more important in cases where your target keyword is commonly misspelled because you can tag the misspellings without including them in your title and description. As a secondary benefit, tags even help you organize and find your own content if you do self-reference tagging e.

So make sure your first tag is the exact keyword you want to target. While you should certainly include long-tail keywords and a few broad match variations, YouTube seems to prefer word phrases Briggsby. The point of tags is to help the algorithm understand what your video is about so it can surface it to users that are looking for a video like yours.

Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Jennifer Kyrnin. Updated March 04, Featured Video. Cite this Article Format.